Time is Flying!!

Can’t believe this is my second to last blog post.  I really feel like I just yesterday was May and my first day of this internship.  Here at Union County we’ve been busy – the agents doing their reports, the county review, my quilt square project, and other community activities.  I’m sure I don’t remember all of the things we’ve done in the last 2 weeks but I’ll do my best.

Stephanie and I traveled to Louisville for the state horse show and communications day (that may have been in the last post).  Sorry if that’s a repeat!  I’m SO close to having all the stories and/or histories of the quilts hanging up for our Quilt Trail.  Under 10 to go!  I’ve come to the realization that I may not see the published book before I go back to Murray, but if it’s ready to send to the printer I’ll count that as a success.

I thoroughly enjoyed our Intern Roundup trip to Three Chimneys!  I’m not a “horse person” so all the finer details is not my area of expertise but I learned quite a bit in the short time we were there.  The racing aspect is something I’ve always liked – so it was like the horse racing hall of fame – in the presence of greatness.  Or something like that…  Also the teamwork lesson at Wallace Station! J

Yesterday was a busy day.  Commissioner Comer came to White Buck Winery as part of a Western KY tour for different commodity sites.  He spoke on the importance of knowing where you come from and the agricultural capabilities that produce much of what we consume.  For those of you who haven’t heard of Udderly Kentucky, you should check it out!  Such a great idea!  KY milk being branded and sold here in the bluegrass.  Hats off to KY Proud!  From there we went to Princeton to the UK Research Center where, UK President, Eli Capilouto spoke to a group of agents and research center staff.  Being a non-UK student, that was a cool snapshot of university life from Lexington.

Owner, Alan White (far left) welcoming Commissioner James Comer (center).

The game plan for the last 2 weeks is to track down my last few quilt stories and help tag entries for the State Fair.  More entertainment to come I’m sure!

2 week checkin

In the last two weeks we have all had a wonderful intern meeting where we got to see one another.  I have been really busy getting ready for Spencer County's back to school Health fair which happened this past Saturday, and we are preparing for the State Fair now.  It has been a great last week with turnout.  We had 996 people signed in at our back to school health fair which is more than it has every been before.  I completed the video slide show of all activities and clubs in the county for the fair.

In the next week school will start back up and we will get started back with school clubs.  It will be a very fun experience to help with that as well as the upcoming State fair.

Camp & Round Up, Marquel Lett

 This was to one of the best weeks by far of my internship. We went to 4H Camp at Lake Cumberland, two counties were there Jefferson County and Cumberland County. This year I was given the task of organizing and copying registration, insurance, and other forms and checking to make sure all our campers’ paperwork was satisfied. We've also had adult and camper orientations, which included some afterhours work, and setting up meeting rooms and power points. The camp last from July 22-26^th and it is a 5 day, 4 night camping experience. The age group is from 9-13 and the camps filled up very quick.

The campers stay in cabins with selected teens and adult leaders. The activities that they participate in are boating, sports, rifle safety, hiking, caving, swimming, crafts, recreation, and high/low ropes. I was in charge of teaching arts and crafts and helping tour the cave. The first class I taught was a t-shirt decoration and sewing. It was great seeing how creative the kids were. During the caving class we explained to the children what a cave was how it was formed.

It was a wonderful experience interacting with the kids, we learned chants, made art and I even  sallied. Sally is a dance that happens every night for a hour where music is played and you skip around in a circle. The only rule to Sally is that you cant say no when someone ask you to Sally.

That Friday I left early because there was an intern round up that Cooperative Extension had planned for all the interns. We took a tour at Three Chimneys Horse Farm. That’s was a new experience for me because I have never been that closely interacted with horses. This a breding farm for retired stallons. The tour explained how horses are bred and sold. The owner is Robert Clay.

It's The Final Countdown!!!

Calling All Interns!!! Can you believe how quickly this summer has gone by?!?!?!? I almost can't comprehend (don't want to comprehend) the fact that next week is my last week on the job. My internship has been incredible and although it is winding down, I still have a full schedule for my final two weeks.

The past to weeks have been a little slower than the rest, seeing as we were all trying to recover from the county fair. I spent the morning of Monday, July 15th with my Land Judging crew. I lined up a lesson to be taught by Mr. Sammy Baker who is one of Adair County's former Vocational Agriculture teachers. He did a wonderful job teaching the Land Judging score card which can be very tedious to learn. Later that night all of the agents in the office and myself attended an Ag Alumni meeting where we got an update on "what's new" in UK Agriculture. On Tuesday we had a lot of rain in the county and had to cancel Land Judging practice so I did various jobs around the office. Wednesday, July 17th was a day full of fun!! We loaded down the office van with seven teens from Adair and Green Counties that participate in Youth Leadership and headed to Pigeon Forge to go white water rafting. The trip consisted of a night at the NASCAR go-cart track, a stay in a hotel, a morning at Bass Pro Shops, and an afternoon of white water rafting!!! Rafting was something I had never done before so I was already nervous but I became even more nervous after having a dream the night before that three of my teeth got knocked out. What made the situation even worse was the fact that our water guide had gotten four of his teeth knocked out by paddles. I WAS FREAKED OUT!!! Needless to say I made it out alive and with all my teeth intact and had a great time. We returned home late Thursday night and I had to be back at the office at six o'clock on Friday morning to begin cooking for Farmer's Market. Although I was tired, I still had a blast using ingredients from the market to turn delicious Kentucky Proud recipes into samples for the community. We had a great turnout and the vendors at the Farmer's Market saw increases in their sales. 

Throughout the next week I spent a lot of time with the ANR agent making farm visits and figuring some yield estimations on research plots. We visited a farmer who we believed might have some compaction issues in his corn crop but we determined that was not the case. I am not sure what the ANR agent ended up diagnosing. We also visited a farmer who had an unidentified weed in his hay crop and we were not sure what type it was on the spot so we brought it back to the office where I identified it as Barnyard grass. We spent the rest of the week calculating yield estimations in zinc and boron research plots for corn. To do the estimations, we measured 17 1/2 ft. down a row and counted the number of ears. We then took four ears from that row and counted how many kernels up and around each ear had and then multiplied to find number of kernels per ear. We averaged the data from the four ears, multiplied it by the number of ears we counted, and then divided by 90 (medium kernel size) to project the yield. The lowest we calculated was 181 and the highest was 212. I really enjoyed this task because it is something that I am highly interested in. On Friday, July 26th I attended the Intern Roundup where we spent a fun filled day in Woodford County!!! I was so happy to see all of my fellow interns again and hear some reflections from their summers!!!

I will spend my last two weeks preparing my Land Judging crew for the state contest, preparing the sportsman's club for our huge county shoot, and preparing myself for my last day!!! Once again, I am beyond thankful for this wonderful opportunity that I have been blessed with. Best Wishes Everyone!!!

Final Month at Meade County

As fair week inches closer and closer, we are hurrying up and preparing for its arrival.  In Meade County, our fair week isn’t just a community gathering, it’s a holiday.  We’ve been known around the state as having the best fair, which means we have a reputation to live up to! A lot of people, work, and time goes into running this large of a fair smoothly, and it’s almost a year-round job with all the prep-work.

Every year our local Farm Bureau puts on a breakfast one morning during the week.  This is a time for extension, FFA, and other agriculturally based organizations to make yearly reports and get information out to the public.  For our extension report, the agents in the office wanted a promotional video done, with testimonials from people who had utilized extension and keep coming back.  From each area, FCS, 4-H, and Agriculture, we had two interviewee’s whom we set up a day and time to interview on camera.  Interviews and pictures took up most of mine and Callie’s time the two weeks before fair.

Along with being a filmmaker, the week before fair called for a lot of cleaning.  A couple days during the week prior to our fair, Carole and I spent a lot of time in our 4-H exhibit hall, cleaning out the old and putting up shelves and new decorations.  Seeing as our storage at the fairgrounds is very chaotic and unorganized, I took it upon myself to create a tote system that corresponded with a detailed listing of all supplies, and where they could be found.  Hopefully this will be of great use to our office, and make it easier in fair weeks to come.  I also came up with a new way of taking in exhibits.  In years before, we would take in exhibits using entry sheets that were unorganized and literally thrown in an old worn-out paper folder.  This year, we had brand new binders with three-hole punched entry sheets that were in order of catalog number as well as tabbed for easy finding.  I believe that this system is going to work out much better and create a less stressful fair week!

It is now Monday of the Meade County Fair, exhibits have been judged and arranged, and the videos for the breakfast have been created, finalized, backed up on two computers, and saved on a DVD and USB Drive. Now it’s time for the livestock shows to begin.  Goats and sheep show Monday night, hogs on Tuesday, and cattle show bright and early on Wednesday morning before our annual livestock auction.  As a 4-Her and FFA member, I showed livestock.  Not being in that show ring was very odd for me, but I was extremely thankful not to have that stress on me anymore! Our shows went smoothly, and our auction brought in record sales!  Our Grand Champion Goat brought in 19 dollars a pound!

 

It is now Thursday morning, the day of the annual Farm Bureau Breakfast, and the debut of Callie and I’s video.  Having worked out all technical issues the day before, all that we needed to do was make sure our timing was just right, and that everyone loved our videos!

Here’s a link to the final product! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKtLwsPcz_U

Now it’s my last week, and I’m sure I’ll find a few small projects around the office and some small tasks to help prepare for state fair.

Wishing Summer Was Longer!!

Like every other summer I am not ready for this one to end, but this time for a reason other than I’m not ready to go back to school.  This summer the reason I am not ready for summer to end is because I am not ready to be done with my internship.  I still feel like I haven’t learned all that I can learn yet.  There are crops that we have been watching from the time we have planted them to see how the diseases and environmental factors have affected them and I want to finish watching them grow until they are harvested.  I have recommended different things to growers when they are having problems with their crops or trees or flowers and I want to see the outcome of my recommendations.  There are just so many things that have been started that I am not going to be able to see the end result and I really want to be able too.  I guess it is a good thing I live in the county I am interning in because I will be making frequent stops in to see how the different projects are coming along.

The past couple of weeks have been no different from the rest of my summer, busy, busy, busy.  Last week was full of 4-H camp and being an adult counselor for one of our cabins, which I must say at first I was a little hesitant because I had never been to 4-H camp before let alone be an adult counselor there.  But I must say that was one of the best weeks of my internship, I do believe.  Now that I am home and can reflect back on the week I realize how much I grew during that week and stepped out of my comfort zone.  In my cabin I had three girls (which were triplets) that had special needs and their older sister; they really seemed to take to me so I took it upon myself to make sure those girls had a great experience at camp.  They started off being pretty homesick and at some points my patience was being tested but I finally got their minds off of home and on to the fun of camp.  Everyone I talked too at camp said that those girls are going to remember me for the rest of their lives and that I really seemed to make an impact on them, but now that I am reflecting back on last week I have realized how much those four girls have impacted my life and have given me a different outlook on life. This is one of the many, many reasons that I feel Extension is the career for me!

This week on the other hand was back to being an Ag intern. As soon as I got back to the office on Monday we had farm visits to make and meetings to attend. I have finished my publication on lawn care (my summer project) this week except for a few finishing touches once my reviewers get done reviewing!  Today has started off to be just as busy with more farm visits and trying to get all the equipment that our office has back into the sheds and barns, out of the weather, now that the rush of getting things in the ground is over with.  Tonight is filled with some more meetings and then tomorrow I look forward to seeing you all at the Intern Roundup!! Safe Travels to everyone!

On the last stretch!

It’s hard to believe that I have completed 10 weeks of my internship. Time really does fly when you’re having fun! The past two weeks have consisted of a lot of cooking with Eugenia. We have held cooking classes and had demonstrations at the Martin County Farmer’s Market! This was definitely a learning experience since I’m average at best with finding my way around the kitchen. But, I’ve had a lot of fun with this summer cooking series and all of the recipes are delicious! We made Zippy Zucchini Cakes the first week. We had a few kids show up for the cooking class and they were all big fans of this potato cake alternative.

This week we made Stuffed Zucchini Boats. I was unsure how the chicken and zucchini combination would taste but they turned out great and they were a big hit at the Farmer’s Market yesterday.

Next week we are making Cabbage Noodle Casserole and I’m anxious to see how that turns out! Next week is also my last full week at the Martin County Extension Office. We have some of the Back to School bashes planned for next week as well, so it should be an exciting last week!

Cooking with Kelsey and 4-H Camp!

My special project and Camp!

Over the past two weeks of my internship, I have been very busy! I had my special project July 8-11.  I decided to do a four day cooking camp!  Lamar, my supervisor, suggested doing a cooking class because there was a good group of youth in their cooking club.  I have been working all summer preparing for my cooking class.  I have been copying papers, putting together folders, buying supplies, and much more.  Lamar and I really wanted a diverse class for the youth; something that can challenge the children, but something they can also reproduce for their families.  I decided to do a theme for each day of the cooking class. 

The first day was Dairy Foods. We started out with introducing rule, kitchen supplies, the importance of dairy foods, and getting to know other children in the class.   Since it was Dairy themed, we made dairy foods.  We made butter and ice cream in a bag.  We also had a guest visitor: Princess, the dairy goat.  The children got to milk Princess and then, if they wanted, taste the milk. 

The second day was Picnic Foods.  The food we made was food that could be brought to a picnic or a potluck dinner.  We made corn, cucumber and bean salad, sloppy joes, and chocolate pizza. Before we made any food, we talked about food safety: knife safety and how to use a meat thermometer.  For the sloppy joes, we use four different types of ground meat (ground beef, lean ground beef, ground pork, and ground chicken) the children had the opportunity to see and taste the differences between all these different meats and then we compared the taste with the cost.  The youth decided that when you compare price, health, and taste that the ground pork or lean ground beef was the best choice.

The third day was Jams and Breads.  We made grape jelly preserves.  We made two jars for each youth, one that they could take home and one that could be entered in the fair.  We also made easy biscuits.  Most of the youth had never made biscuits before so they learn techniques of cutting and rolling the dough.  These biscuits could also be remade and entered in the county fair.  We also did a hand washing experiment on this day.  Each child had vegetable oil and cinnamon put on their hands.  Each child had to wash their hands in: only cold water, cold water and soap, only warm water, and warm water and soap.  We compared the differences in how much residue was left on their hands after washings. 

On the last day, we made and learned about International Foods.  We started out the day with looking at pictures from the book What the World Eats. The pictures from this book show a family from a country and all the food they eat in a week.  The countries range from Chine, to Texas, USA, to Chad.  I think this was eye opening for the children because some of the countries had large families, but very little food to eat. And some didn’t even have water in their pictures because drinking water is very rare.  After we completed what the world eats, we compared the food pyramids from different countries.  The food we made for international foods were: Swedish meatballs as our appetizers, ranch chicken tacos for our main dish, and chocolate mousse for dessert.  The children really enjoyed getting to try these foods from different countries and also enjoyed that the food was easy to make so they could remake it for their families. 

In the midst of my special project, we were also preparing for 4-H camp.  So when I wasn’t in teaching my cooking class, I was helping make copies and get supplies together for camp.   It was a very busy week, but knowing that I was leaving for camp Monday made it a little better!

So Monday rolled around, and we were ready to leave for North Central 4-H Camp!  We camped with Bracken, Carroll, Harrison, Pendleton, and Robertson.  The theme for our week at camp was Blast from the Past.  Since it was the middle of July when we camped, it was definitely a hot week, but I had a blast.  I helped teach a leadership class with Shannon Farell, the Robertson County Agent.  We had a great group of youth in our group.  The camp delegates also participate in swamp monster- which was canoe games, gold rush- where you found gold rocks all over the camp, water Olympics- which were relay races in the pool, and Sadie field games- which were relay races on a giant field.  Sally was my favorite part of camp.  Each night of Sally was decade themed.  I didn’t dress up most of the nights, but seeing the camp delegates dressing up and having a great time was so much fun! Even though it was a hot week, we had a really great week at camp! I had a great group of girls in my cabin and… thank goodness, we had no home sick girls in my cabin!

LJ's ready for camp!

Silly intern picture!

 Leadership class!

 Black light sally!!

 AC/JC surprise ... finding a piece of gum in a sour kraut and sour cream pie.. and then blowing a bubble!

 Cabin 14 ... with the spirit stick!

Grant County delegates!

The Final Stretch

It is so hard to believe that in just two short weeks my internship will be over; time truely has flown by!  The majority of my time was recently spent preparing for my project, which was an Outdoor Adventure day camp.  The 4-Her's spent the day on our local extension farm learning about critters on land and in the water.  We started the day off by taking a hike through the woods.  Even though it was extremely hot and humid they stuck with me and had a great time.  We found some frogs, catepillars, worms, spiders, and more.  They also collected leaves that interested them to use during a craft later in the day.  The EFNEP assistant prepared a lunch with the camp participants (homemade pizzas!) and then we headed to the creek.  The ANR agent from Menifee County, Courtney Jenkins, brought her water quailty program and taught the 4-Her's about the many micro-invertebrates found right in their backyard creeks.  They learned how to determine the water quality of the creek just by determining which creatures were present in the water. 



Creek Wading!

 The creek wading was probably their favorite part, which was expected, but they also had a great time learning about all those critters they chase around.  Most said that they were going straight home to check their own creeks.  After they were finished in the creek we started working on the crafts I had planned for the day.  We discussed what had been found earlier on our hike and I told them what trees the leaves belonged to that they had found.  They then used the leaves to make t-shirts. 



T-shirt Painting





The t-shirts turned out really cool and the kids loved using what they had found to make something they could wear.  One of the categories at our County Fair is Painted Rocks so they also got to pick out a rock from the creek and then paint it to take home.  Some of them painted the creatures they found and some painted the 4-H clover, they were great!  Everyone had a great day and I think the day camp was a success!  They're already talking about having more next summer. 

In addition to my project I have also been preparing for Safe Night, attended State Communications Day, and have been preparing some of our 4-H members for the State Fair.  We will have many country ham participants and for the first time we are taking Horticulutre and Poultry judging teams.  My internship will be over before the State Fair but my agent has already said she would love for me to go with them anyway.  I am really enjoying working with the 4-Her's who are going to participate in these contests and love seeing how excited and motivated they are. 



Poultry Judging in Magoffin County


The next two weeks are going to go by much too fast and I already dread leaving this wonderful office.  They have definitely made it a summer to remember!  

Nutrition Lessons with Senior Citizens

With only two weeks remaining of my summer internship, I have mainly focused all of my time and effort into my special project. For my special project this summer, I visited and plan to visit to mostly all of the Senior Citizens Centers in Floyd County. I visit the centers around lunchtime to a nutrition lesson. I have done nutrition lessons over Low Fat Diets, Fiber, and Low Sodium Diets: Cooking with Herbs.

I have traveled up and down he windy roads of Floyd County making multiple visits to the Prestonsburg, Wheelwright, and Mud Creek Senior Citizens Centers. I have met and interacted with so many new and wonderful people in my home county. If it weren’t for this internship, I wouldn’t have even explored and discovered the many great towns between the mountains here in eastern Kentucky.

These past two weeks, I just started doing the nutrition lesson over herbs and low sodium diets. I was the most nervous about this lesson. I have never been familiar with herbs or even cooked with them, but after learning, researching, and teaching about herbs, I have begun incorporating and experimenting with different herbs when cooking for myself.

In the 9^th and 10^th week of my internship, I attended a district board meeting and I also made a trip up to the Pike County Extension Office to attend the Pike County FCS Intern, Mollie Dawahare’s Cooking with Friends Program. She did a fantastic job on teaching us how to cut an onion and pepper. We also made delicious flat bread!

Farm Visits, Bees, Fair clean up and more.

Here at the Madison County Extension Office we have been staying busy. Last week started with the second meeting of the Madison County Beekeepers group that I started. Between the two meetings over 75 different beekeepers are involved with the group. I had no idea that there was this much interest in the county for this, it is great and I hope the group continues to grow. Brandon and I have even planned a beekeeping field day for them in August with speakers and open hive demonstrations; I am excited and hope it goes well. Tuesday and Wednesday of that week Brandon and I made countless farm visits to tobacco producers who were having trouble with the wet weather. We also made visits to producers on my summer project list that were starting to get some pinkeye break out issues. With the way the weather has been this year it has been shaping up to be a late pinkeye year in the county, but cases are starting to appear now that I am contacting producers. Thursday of that week Agriculture Commissioner James Comer came down to the Richmond Stockyards again, to speak about issues with P.I. calves in the state. The state veterinarian Bob Stout was there along with several other local veterinarians, talking about the issues of P.I. and what options may be looked at for eradication of the problem in the future. It was very neat to see how the Commissioner worked with the producers in the audience and how the meeting went off without a hitch. The Commissioner was also very proud of the newly announced Udderly Milk 100% Kentucky produced milk program. Later on that evening I attended the county’s Cattlemen’s board meeting with Brandon, that also seemed to go very well.

 

The following week began with more farm visits, mainly to those who were having pinkeye issues so I could get some face fly counts, and pictures of active cases. Tuesday Amanda (Horticulture Agent) and I went to visit one of her demonstration plots, which is showing the use of black plastic, the plot is a great way to introduce producers to black plastic production of vegetables. Tuesday and Wednesday were late nights as everyone was getting ready for the fair, we had cleanup of the fairgrounds, and much of it looked as if it hadn’t been touched since last year’s fair. The fair is starting this Thursday for us, and won’t be over until the next Sunday, so the next two weeks will be very busy for us here in Madison County. Thursday of last week we hosted a Chinese delegation for the afternoon and explained to them what we do at the extension office and what extension does across the state and how it is set up. They thoroughly seemed to enjoy the meeting and had plenty of questions. Later that evening Brandon had his Ag council meeting, at the Berea college farm, where the fall field day will be held. The group was able to identify topic areas as well as issues of concern. Well I am excited for another two weeks of extension!

Adventures in Clark County Extension

The past two weeks at the Clark County Extension Office have been much more relaxed in comparison to the beginning of my internship, but just as exciting and educational as ever. The more relaxed nature of these past two weeks have allowed me the opportunity to experience some of the other areas of extension.

Sick trees everywhere!

 With our agriculture and natural resources agent on vacation this week, I have had to opportunity to make some farm and home visits to local members of the community by myself. I have even been able to familiarize myself with the University of Kentucky’s campus through many trips to the plant diagnostics lab and regulatory services. Due to the extremely wet summer we have had in Clark County, many people are experiencing issues with the health of their trees. Even a good thing such as rain can be detrimental in excess! I also had to opportunity to go along with our ANR agent on farm visits to local commercial vegetable producers in preparation for a field day later this month. Tomatoes are plentiful in Clark County this summer!

This Wednesday was spent in preparation for the NVON conference in Frankfort. I had the opportunity to travel with our FCS agent on Thursday to assist with a class she will be presenting on the “Plate it Up” program. Good food and even better company certainly made for an exciting trip to the capital of our beautiful Commonwealth!

Recipe cards for NVON goodie bags.

Working hard with robots.

July for 4H means day camps are beginning in Clark County. Our first day camp this month involved Lego Robotics. I will have to say that the youth in our county most definitely put me to shame with their skills and knowledge of computer programming! The future is definitely bright with these youth leading the way.

It’s hard to believe that in three weeks I will be heading back to Murray State to begin graduate studies. My time with the Clark County Extension service has made for an extremely exciting summer!