Hi everyone, welcome to week 9 of the blog!📷 Rising Star Intern Jasmine Williams started off last Friday by volunteering at Beloit Donation Garden by harvesting and taking squash, kale, broccoli, and garlic to Food at First. From Monday to Thursday, Rising Star Interns worked on their final document and presentation to prepare to present to the Deans of their colleges. On Tuesday, Jasmine and Emily went to Beloit Donation Gardens to harvest strawberries, green zucchini, and yellow zucchini, but were sadly pushed out by the rain, but they persevered! Jasmine and Emily ended the week by providing an educational program at Cultivating Hope Farms, teaching the youth about the importance of healthy hydration💧and exercise 💪. Lastly, we want to give a special shoutout to Jasmine Williams, Emily Plagman, Colter Lauersdorf, and Donovan Olson for receiving pre-application approval for the 4 H forward grant!! 🎉🥳They will all take the next steps into writing out the full grant for submission and wait for the final results. Wish them luck 🍀!

We had an amazing week centered around the North Iowa Fair! We spent a great deal of our time preparing for the Skill-A-Thon and then encouraging locals to participate. Each day of the Skill-A-Thon focused on a different animal. Wednesday and Thursday we focused on Beef Cattle and Swine: we had a station for breeds, anatomy, and retail and wholesale cuts. Friday we focused on Dairy Cattle: where we had a feed ID station, breeds station, and anatomy. Overall, we had a great turn out. We had all ages participate from 5-65. Many participants walked away with a better understanding of livestock animals!

We ended our week with the final Show Stock Buddies Show. Before the show, we had our buddies and mentors practice briefly. There was a lot of excitement in the air, but our mentors were great with their buddies. The show had an amazing audience and judge who cheered them on. We could not have asked for a better show, participant pool, and volunteer base!

This program ultimately allowed youth with disabilities to interact with livestock in a safe environment. Through showing, our participants were able to gain valuable leadership skills and spend quality time with their peers. They learned responsibility and teamwork through working with mentors and their animal. They also learned how to communicate about their animal, with their mentor, and their judge. Overall, this program was an amazing experience for all involved and we believe this was an exciting addition to the North Iowa Fair!

Week 8 in Story County was filled with nothing less than excitement and fair fun. To start off the week, Colter harvested and weeded at the Beloit Donation Gardens, and Emily assisted with all swine check-ins and shows. While Jasmine was finishing the last-minute planning for the nutritional programs at the fair.

These programs were centered around maintaining a nutritious and healthy diet. The children had different stations to travel to, which included learning about fruits and vegetables, planting lima beans to take home, and “shopping” at a farmer’s market. These kids were also given tours of the Story County Fair and learned of all the fun 4-H’ers have.

With the fair festivities wrapping up, we look forward to seeing the fruits of our labor as we finish our projects.

We started this week with comment writing at the Crawford county fair and working on a story walk on recycling for the Crawford county fair. We also helped clean up from the Shelby county fair. Later in the week, we set up our recycling display in Audubon county and went to the Audubon classic, Darrell’s Place. To finish out our week, we moved our display to the Crawford county fair and set up the story walk and gave out picture books on recycling to kids passing our display. Even with the rain earlier in the morning, we had a decent turnout of people.

Another amazing week in Region 4, we spent the majority of our time at Cerro Gordo County preparing Show Stock Buddies programming, Skill-A-Thon, and meeting with Central Gardens. The highlight of our week was the practice show for Show Stock Buddies at the Central Gardens of North Iowa!

We spent some of our time at the Central Gardens of North Iowa! Early on in the week, we attended a meeting to discuss promotional materials for Central Gardens of North Iowa. On Friday, the majority of our time was spent setting up the practice show for Show Stock Buddies at the Central Gardens of North Iowa. We were fortunate to have three of the five buddies attend the optional practice show, as well as, four of the mentors. The participants really enjoyed it and we had their judge who had them practice answering questions. The public cheered them on and were able to interact with our goats and rabbits after the show was over.

Overall, we had a great turn out and practice show! We were grateful to have media coverage from the Globe Gazette! Check out the article linked below!

https://globegazette.com/news/local/mason-city-4-h-show-stock-buddies-mayhue-slinger-haitmann-riser-debour/article_da85b8a0-406f-11ef-823f-2b3f9717671b.html#tracking-source=home-top-story

Last week was probably our busiest week yet in Region 13! We helped out at the Shelby County Fair, where we set up our display on recycling. We also partnered with Carroll County Waste Management to set up recycling stands throughout the fairgrounds.

On Saturday we played our recycling relay game with kids and handed out coloring books about recycling.

We are looking forward to Audubon and Crawford County Fairs this week as well!

This week, Region 17’s Rising Stars met and collaborated with several project partners and community resources. Tuesday saw the interns working through details and scheduling in preparation for the Story County Fair next week from July 16th – 21st at the Story County Fairgrounds in Nevada. With the gorgeous weather on Tuesday afternoon, the interns went out to Beloit Donation Gardens to help harvest (kale and beets), plant (bush beans), and work on pest control (scouting for squash bugs). Wednesday, Emily and Colter met with representatives from Cultivating Hope Farms and ISU’s College of Design to discuss a potential collaboration to design several spaces for the non-profit organization. Wednesday evening, Emily met with representatives from Cultivating Hope Farms and Collegiate 4-H to discuss opportunities for further collaboration. Thursday Jasmine, and Emily went out to Cultivating Hope Farms to lead a program to teach youths about the colorful variety of nutritionally balanced meals in a program Jasmine designed called “Eat a Rainbow.” Thursday evening saw the interns at a meeting with the Story County Council to give an informal presentation on our summer projects and what we have accomplished so far this summer. As the summer speeds by we can’t wait to see what fun new experiences we’ll get to have as part of ISU Extension.

Last week was another busy week for interns of Region 4, Taylor and Lauren. We spent the majority of our week in Worth County at the 4 Days of 4th of July Fun at Art Farm Iowa! We had a great time helping Art Farm set-up for the event, help serving food, and most importantly increase awareness of Monarch Butterflies! We continued to promote our Monarch Moments project. Through Monarch Moments, we encourage the public to make origami butterflies. For every butterfly made, there will be a milkweed seed planted on the Art Farm. This is a project unique to the area, as Monarchs have historically passed over Iowa during their summer migration.

In Cerro Gordo County, we spent time preparing for the Skill-A-Thon and Show Stock Buddies at the North Iowa Fair. For Skill-A-Thon, we finalized our worksheets and the logistics of how the activity will work. As for Show Stock Buddies, we spent time contacting the local paper about the practice show and the show at the fair.

Overall, it was a great week gearing up for the fair in Cerro Gordo County and celebrating the holiday weekend in Worth County!

Although week 7 was cut short due to the holiday, we interns in Audubon, Crawford, and Shelby Counties still had a productive week! On Monday, we headed up to the Scooters in town to drop off a bucket to be filled with coffee grounds for our compost piles. We also worked on finishing up our poster about recycling for the fair that is being held in Shelby County this coming week. Tuesday morning consisted of an Interview with KDSN, the local radio station in Denison, to inform the Denison community about our summer internship. 

We also found time to finish putting together the compost piles in Audubon and Crawford County despite the rain and shortened week. We ended our week by planning out interactive games and activities to put around our poster for the fairs to attract children and help them better understand the importance of recycling.

All of us interns are excited to get this next week rolling with the Shelby County Fair and share with you all that we did!

We are wrapping up another amazing week in Region 4! We spent a lot of time in Cerro Gordo County. At the beginning of the week, we were able to meet the highly esteemed Cerro Gordo Extension Council. We were delighted to gain a behind the scenes look at how some of the decisions are made regarding extension! Throughout the week, we spent a majority of our time prepping for the upcoming Show Stock Buddies Workshop, our activity for Fresh on Fridays, and the Skill-A-Thon.

In Worth County, we spent time at Art Farm Iowa planning on beautifying some of the outdoor spaces and creating an activity friendly for the youth! We went shopping and created centerpieces for the Art Farm Iowa outdoor seating. After some research, we found another way to display the painted rocks from last years Rising Stars! We are going to decorate a bird bath to add the rocks for display.

We finalized our week by doing another Show Stock Buddies Workshop at the 4-H Learning Center in Cerro Gordo County. The buddies were able to do a fun ice breaker activity and craft with their mentors! After a gentle reminder about animal handling, we went outside and practiced leading the goats around in a circle. Once everyone was able to lead the goats a couple of times, we came in and practiced carrying the rabbit cages around the ring and gently setting them on table to show the judges. Overall, it was a great workshop and we are looking forward to our practice show at Fresh on Fridays at the Central Gardens of North Iowa!