Hi, Angeleggster,
Didn't mean to go so long without a reply. We're in the middle of selling our home and moving, so things are a little discombobulated here at the house.
We are moving in to an old farm house in Morrow County and it needs a lot of work, so I'll be busy throughout the summer. It's on 1.7 acres and has a small orchard that I'll be pruning this coming week. Went to a pruning clinic in Union Co. last Saturday, picked up some equipment on the way home, and I'm eager to put it to use.
To the south of the house is part of a field that is sowed in wheat right now and between that and the back yard is a brushy area grown up in teasels, blackberry canes and some other annoying weeds. I will probably be pasturing the chickens and turkeys out there to scratch everything down. It's more work than I want to take on myself without a bush hog, so might as well let the girls have at it.
And speaking of the girls, we'll be picking up our first batch of chicks this week in Centerburg (since
TSC was sold out of nearly everything both times I stopped in). Even though the house is still in chaos, a batch of chicks should help the kids cope with the stress of moving by giving them a little distraction.
As for 4H clubs, the quality of advisors varies across the board. This is our third club and the best we've been in so far. It's also the biggest, but I attribute that to our leader. She is very organized, runs a good meeting, and keeps a very good calendar. She rides us pretty hard on dates for getting things in, which is probably the most important thing. They keep a dairy, so they tend to focus on cows and dairy feeders, but a lot of us are into poultry, so we have a lot of livestock projects. You may have to shop around for clubs that fit what you want to do for 4H. There's another club in our country that has some hard-core poultry kids and they are way too serious for my kids. When my kids talk about them, it's like they've discovered the Stepford wives or something. It's all chickens all the time and very, very competitive. I think that's why my kids like the turkeys - a lot less preparation and raising them is about the easiest thing there is.
So the next time you go to the fair, pay attention to the various clubs and see if there's one that works out better for you. As I said, we had to try a couple different ones before we found this one.