2022 4-H Summer Re-cap, Alana West

September 13, 2022

2022 4-H Summer Re-Cap

Newberry County 4-H recently wrapped up their summer programs for 2022. The goal for this year was to introduce local youth to some vintage skills in hopes that they would enter their creations in a local fair. This would benefit both the fair, with more entries and from a younger audience, and it will allow the youth the opportunity to win ribbons and premium monies.

We started the summer with a 3-day hand quilting class taught by a local artist and with many fabulous donations from a local quilt shop, Quilt Werks. Six girls learned basic hand quilting skills and completed a lap quilt to take home.

Next, our Mixing and Making in the Kitchen camp introduced youth to food processing and preservation. It was a long, tiring day but 9 youth made and canned blueberry jam, processed peanut butter, made butter and butter milk to go in our homemade biscuits, start refrigerator pickles, decorated pie tops and made ice cream in a bag. All in a day’s work!

By July, we were ready for a more laid-back camp. We partnered with Fairfield County 4-H to offer a camp in Jenkinsville, on the county line. Our Pioneer Ways Day Camp introduces youth to life on the frontier: what they wore, how they traveled, what they ate, how they played and more. We did sneak in a little technology with the original ‘Oregon Trail’ computer game, which was a hit. However, the rest of the day we played pioneer games, made butter and hard tack for a snack, built a ‘log’ cabin out of pool noodles, made a journal and quill to write with our freshly produced blueberry ink. It was an eye-opening day.

Our final camp of the summer was a STEM day where youth were introduced to computer coding and robotics. Youth learned about different computer languages and used a program called Scratch to animate their names. However, the big hits of the day were programming different types of robots to do different tasks.

As we close out the summer, we are looking towards the new 4-H year which beings in September. This year we are excited to bring back a few clubs that haven’t meet since before COVID, in addition to clubs that started during the shutdowns. Stay tuned to keep up with all of our opportunities. Fore more information on Newberry County 4-H contact 4-H Agent Alana West at awillin@clemson.edu or 803.768.8442.