Harrison County Extension

Interning at the Harrison County Extension office in my hometown of Cynthiana, KY has been a great two weeks so far. Even on my first day, I was treated as another agent. The agents and support staff here are great people to work with and are very welcoming. I have always known that extension is something extremely important to this community, but after being in the office for two weeks, I have been able to witness first-hand how important the services the agents provide truly are to these people. During the internship, I am working primarily with the county 4-H Agent, Mike Meyer. I have become good friends with Mike over the past several years through livestock judging and showing cattle together, so I was excited to be paired with him for the internship process. He has been the person to get me interested in extension from the beginning, so it's fitting that he would be the agent that I work with the most.

I have packed a lot into these first couple of weeks. I have been helping out with the livestock judging team and the horse judging team at least once a week. Judging is something I feel pretty strongly about, because I think there are many characteristics that can be learned by being on a judging team that are important later in life as well. Last Friday, Mike and I went down to Jessamine county to teach a showmanship and fitting clinic to their livestock club. I enjoy working with 4-Hers and their project animals and teaching them things that they can improve upon during the summer show season in preparation for the Kentucky State Fair in August.

The livestock judging team competed in the Boyle County livestock judging contest last Saturday, and were well represented, despite having many of our senior division judgers at another leadership event hosted by the Kentucky Junior Cattlemen's Association. The contest was well put together with extremely high quality classes, and we certainly appreciate the work that went into hosting such a great contest before the state 4-H livestock judging contest in June.

I was expecting there to be meetings associated with being an extension agent, but there are certainly more than I anticipated. My first week, we had the district staff meeting in Lexington. It was great to be able to meet a lot of the other agents and interns in the district and see more of what goes on behind the scenes with extension. I have also been to a couple meetings about Teen Conference coming up, as well as planning for 4-H camp and Clover bud camp. I also attended the Farm Bureau meeting last Thursday where we had an appreciation dinner and there were representatives of many politicians that discussed what they were trying to do about the concerns that have been brought up by Farm Bureau members. It was great to see how concerned they were to help local agriculturalists by passing certain bills in Washington and Frankfort that were relevant to the livelihood of not only Harrison County farmers, but farmers across the state as well.  

It has been a great start to my internship in Harrison County, and I am looking forward to the coming weeks. I am assured that I will get the full extension agent experience by working with the staff here, and for that, I am grateful.

Until next time,

Luke Arthur