: 4-H Story!

: 4-H Story! Despite the presence of large cities, Maryland has a thriving 4-H program that spans urban and rural areas alike. A few years back, a friend from Washington D.C. visited my farm for the first time. Right off the bat, he noticed the bumper sticker on my pickup truck, a green four-leaf clover emblazoned with large, white H’s. “Forrest,” he said, without the slightest trace of humor, “you never told me you were Irish!” Suffice to say, he had never heard of 4-H, a youth program every bit as venerable as the Boy or Girl Scouts. But he’s not alone. Even with 6 million current members, 30 million alumni, and a 110 year track record, 4-H continues to fly beneath our cultural radar. Unless you happened to be raised in rural America, chances are you might not have crossed paths with this program yourself. But 4-H remains a vital—if habitually unassuming—thread in our national tapestry, and it’s a program that deserves more positive press than it commonly receives. Sometimes a hand-sewn patch says a thousand words. Traditionally linked arm-in-arm with agriculture, over the years 4-H has increasingly veered towards mainstream American life. In fact, according to their website, 4-H now teaches topics ranging “from agricultural and animal sciences to rocketry, robotics, environmental protection and computer science – to improve the nation’s ability to compete in key scientific fields and take on the leading challenges of the 21st century.” Rocketry and robotics? Sheesh, that’s a far cry from the ascot I made for my “You Can Sew” project way back in middle school. (I’d like to imagine that if they offered Robotics projects in 1984, that I’d have traded in my ascot for an android. But I digress.) In my case, I eventually graduated from sewing to sowing… that is, sowing seeds, and raising sows. I was one of those 4-H farm kids who actually ended up becoming a professional farmer. Surprisingly, even though my club was located in rural West Virginia, few of my peers became farmers themselves. Most opted for careers in nearby Washington D.C., and left agriculture behind as they commuted to work each day in the big city. But history has a way of circling back on itself. While supporters would argue that its agricultural mission never went away, 4-H’s farming identity might be primed for an unexpected, retro-style comeback. The likelihood of this occurred to me while thumbing through the Farmers Almanac. You know the Farmers Almanac, of course—the one started in 1818 and used each year for weather forecasts to gardening advice to the best time to go fishing. It even comes with an unmistakable, (if rather mysterious) hole punched through the upper left hand corner, providing its readers the option to hook it to their belt loop while transplanting tomatoes.