4-H News
Anna Burgess County Extension Agent

The mission of 4-H is to help young people grow into productive, contributing members of society by teaching them leadership, citizenship, communication skills and much more. The success of the 4-H program has been very evident in the last few weeks.

Once again, we had another very busy, yet successful Halloween season. During Harvest of Fun festivities Cierra Joyner, Kristin McLamb and Krysten Fail lent a hand to make sure our game went smoothly. Several others came in during the week to work on painting the pond.

Hopefully, you noticed the pumpkins on display. Those pumpkins were submitted by 4- H'ers for our Pumpkin Decorating Contest. 4-H thanks Robin and Mandy from Family Enrichment for being judges. Awards were as follows:

Cloverleaf Division- Best 4-H Theme, Tyler Wagner; Most Creative, Colton Sharkey; Scariest, Gaige Ridings; Most Original, Tyler Taylor; Cutest, Trent Lindsey; Best Traditional, Jay Burton; and Best TV/Movie Character, Austin Wagner; and

Junior/Senior Division- Best 4- H Theme, Justin Lanier; Most Creative, Tonya Lane; Scariest, Joseph Grier; Most Original, Callie Dailey; and Cutest, Kristin McLamb.

The pumpkin that won Best Overall was Brandon Cherry's Werewolf. It was decorated with all edible products from licorice and kiwi to garlic. Congratulations to all of the winners! I thank you all for taking the time to enter a pumpkin.

Many of our seventh through 12th-grade 4-H'ers came to the 4-H Office for several days and worked hard to prepare for the Halloween dance, which they hosted for the fifth- and sixthgrade. This year they had a Fear Factor theme. The Junior and Senior 4-Hers came up with five different games for the participants to take turns playing. They broke into teams and one person from each team participated in each activity. The "Fear Factor" games ranged from really easy stuff, for the team members with weaker stomachs, to some slightly gross stuff for those who thought fear was not a factor for them.

The games consisted of racing to see who could make a bubble from a piece of bubble gum covered in powdered sugar first, to eating Spam. All ingredients used were stuff you would find at home in your pantry.

I was very proud of the Junior and Senior 4-H'ers. They worked really hard putting all of the games and decorations together, and they didn't leave until everything was cleaned up.

My favorite part of the dance was seeing everyone's costumes. It never ceases to amaze me what they come up with.

**Correction: In last week's paper, Kristin McLamb was mistakenly labeled as having won in the Cloverleaf division instead of the Junior division.