Another year of 4-H Club activities has come to a close, and with the announcement of the award winners for the myriad categories on offer each year, the club is excited to move forward into a much closer-to-normal season.
4-H Club president Tami LeBlanc said that even with lingering restrictions over 2021 and into 2022, the club was able to continue to meet and get some hands on learning. Additionally, 4-H participants were also able to return to the Rainy River Valley Agricultural Fall Fair, and younger club members made virtual meetings a rousing success.
“You know what? It went quite well,” LeBlanc said.
“We did have a chance where we were able to have in-person meetings. We did have the fair and the kids were able to show their animals. There was a lot of stuff to work out with the masking and social distancing, that kind of stuff, but we worked around it and made the best of our club. There was also the Cloverbuds club, and they did a virtual club.”
LeBlanc said the Cloverbuds, a program for younger children, was made a success through the hard work of the program leaders, who sent out packages for everyone to do activities together online and present to each other. There was also a special community participation activity that Cloverbud members got to embark upon with the loosening of restrictions.
“They were able to decorate and make up a float and participated in two different Christmas parades in the district,” she said.
“That was something they could do outside, something they could participate in. Some members from 4-H joined in on that as well, so they helped with the younger ones.”
LeBlanc said she was consistently impressed with all the members of the club, who took the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic in stride and helped to keep everyone connected and on-track.
“These kids are really amazing,” LeBlanc said.
“With the flexibility, and even the leaders, just getting creative with how to run our clubs and make them enjoyable for the kids. It was able to happen. We all became experts on Zoom meetings. We were worried at first but really, the kids did really well with those. They were doing it for school anyways, and they helped us out with getting onto the call if we were having troubles. They taught us some stuff. It worked out well.”
After two years of interruptions and uncertainty due to the pandemic, LeBlanc said the club is excited to return to something resembling normal, and will allow them to offer far more than they have been able to in the recent past.
“It looks like we’re going to go back to our normal before COVID,” she explained.
“We’ll be able to have our in-person meetings, our fair is going to look like old times, and even each of the beef clubs do a fun day. They get together at somebody’s farm and everyone rings their animal to practice showing and stuff. We’ll be able to do that again. It’s going to be so nice to see people’s faces, without the masks.”
LeBlanc added that the 4-H club has many other programs outside of the eternally popular beef clubs, and so there’s always the possibility of running additional clubs if the interest is there.
It takes plenty of hard work to be successful in a 4-H club, and LeBlanc extended her congratulations to all of the award winners from this year’s slate of programming.
“I just want to say congratulations to all the award winners,” she said.
“It’s been another great year to watch all the kids work hard and still keep smiling and moving forward.”
