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42


4-H skills still key despite changes


in farming Today’s youth need the program’s life-long benefits by RONDA PAYNE LADNER—In BC’s changing


agricultural landscape, 4-H BC has had to change, too. No longer are there hundreds of kids in Metro Vancouver ready and able to take on a livestock project. But the skills learned decades ago in 4-H still apply today, and past 4-H members want to see the organization benefit kids in the future. Fourth-generation Delta farmer Hugh Reynolds credits 4-H with many of the skills he has used at Reynelda Farms and throughout his life. “I had friends and there was the shows and the meetings and the highlight of the year was the PNE,” he says. “I found it really useful. I was secretary-treasurer, so I got to keep the minutes.” Reynolds’s first club was the Delta Ayrshire 4-H Calf Club and when Ayrshires fell out of favour, he joined the Holstein club. Today, he’s secretary-


treasurer for a half-dozen organizations, thanks to that early start. Public speaking skills were important, as was the need to


certainly helpful, but the social skills were of lasting value, too.


Kevin and Joanne Husband, owners of Emma Lea Farms, met in the Richmond Delta 4-H Beef Club in the late 1960s and have been married for 41 years. Many farm kids from the area were part of the club, including Bill Zylmans, Dave Terpsma and the Reifel family. “If we weren’t friends when


we started, we were when we finished,” Kevin says. “It taught us a lot of good things. We had to do public speaking and cattle judging and record-keeping. It was a big social group, too. It was very hard as a 10 or 12-year-old to get up there and speak in front of all your friends. It was more than what school had at the time.” Joanne’s dad was a 4-H


keep track of all expenditures when raising a calf so he could determine its cost and value. “Everything had to add up to the penny,” he explains. “There was a very clear sense that farming was a business.” The business skills were


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • OCTOBER 2019


A HEAD START. A (very) young Kevin Husband was part of the Richmond Delta 4-H Beef Club in the 1960s, where he met his future bride Joanne. “If we weren’t friends when we started, we were when we finished,” he recalls about his club days. SUBMITTED PHOTO


leader and her sister was a member, so she would go along with them to shows. “I loved animals. That kind of got me going there,” she says. “Learning to speak in front of people was huge. It took a lot of guts to do that because you can be pretty shy at that age.” In Langley, Tom Barichello’s first 4-H dairy calf came from his dad’s herd.


“I guess I was lucky that my dad had a really good herd,”


he says. “Even in Langley … they used to have 4-H activities where you’d judge cattle.”


Barichello found there was a competitive side to 4-H that appealed to him. “You’d have a


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showmanship competition and that showmanship side, you’re competing against all the other dairy competitors,” he says. “I had a Jersey competing against Holsteins.” Things have changed since those earlier decades of 4-H. Many farms have become condos and shopping malls. The number of kids looking for 4-H activities has dwindled, but there are still benefits to be had, even though many clubs look different than they once did. “Agriculture is really struggling,” he says. “I think it’s important that even that rural [sense] is maintained and at least young people get an opportunity to learn some of those things we learned.” He points to the various clubs within the 4-H program that aren’t necessarily about raising livestock, yet still offer the same skills. “We give a [leadership]


award in my dad’s name [in 4-H],” Barichello says. “It’s important to us to keep [4-H] going.”


Joanne Husband notes her club did an activity that would still work today. “We put a petting zoo in at


Park Royal mall in North Vancouver,” she explains. “People had never seen something like that.” “Anything that pertains to helping to bridge the gap between urban and the country,” Kevin says. “Anything like that is beneficial to both.


We learn a lot from the urban mindset, too. And they can better understand agriculture.” Joanne says her nieces and


nephews in Langley have benefitted from their involvement with 4-H. “It was very good for them,”


she says. “There’s just not a lot of hobby farmers around with kids to do it in Delta. You get kids in a club and they learn to talk about things and they just share a passion.” Keeping clubs going is


important to Barichello, who wants to be sure the leadership skills, friendships and social side of things are preserved. “I don’t know that we do enough to sort of preserve that side of it,” he says. “I think it’s important that it continues to encourage people to participate.”


Reynolds believes the existing framework still teaches kids relevant skills that aren’t learned in school. “Looking at whatever


you’re doing as a business, the young kids have to learn to be flexible and that’s something 4-H can do for them,” he says. “Life-long skills are learned. It gives kids a chance to make a few mistakes and no harm is done.”


The pledge of head, heart, hands and health “for my club, my community, my country, and my world” is a valuable part of the program in his opinion. “We would start off the meetings with the pledge,” he says. “It would focus our thoughts every time we met. Even at a dance, we would start off with the pledge. We knew that we were there for a purpose.”


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