North Country 4-H enters third year of agriculture competition

Medical Lake area club continues to gather membership, prepares for spring livestock showing

By RYAN LANCASTER

Staff Reporter

November's gray skies forecast a long winter ahead, but spring will come soon enough for the kids of North Country 4-H, who are busily preparing for another year of competition at May's Junior Livestock Show.

On Sunday about 20 kids, parents and volunteers gathered at Medical Lake's Masonic Lodge for their second monthly meeting of the new 4-H season. Club leader Gina Mosley passed out club calendars and record books before going over the fundamentals of tracking feeding schedules, costs and the numerous other items associated with raising livestock. Other information was freely shared as well, from where to learn about raising “fiber goats” for their hair, to who has local hogs available for purchase.

Mosley, who has been a club leader for 25 years, said the North Country 4-H group originated years back in North Spokane, but as members began growing up and moving on there were few incoming recruits to replace them. In 2008 she brought the club to the Medical Lake area at the request of Carl Grub, who founded the Jensen Memorial Youth Ranch that same year.

Grub and his brother Craig set up the 105-acre ranch just outside of Medical Lake to nurture local 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs in Medical Lake, Cheney, Reardan, Airway Heights and other West Plains communities. Profits from a Reardan wheat farm support the operation, which the Grubs established as a nonprofit in honor of Medical Lake brothers Dana and John Jensen, who died serving in Vietnam.

“They asked me to come down here and get a club going in conjunction with the ranch,” Mosley said. What started with four members two years ago has now grown to more than 20 elementary through high school aged kids, most residents of Medical Lake.

Mosley said kids can board pigs, sheep, cattle and other livestock for no cost at the Jensen ranch as long as they take responsibility for the care and feeding of their own animals, an arrangement that allows city kids the chance to participate in programs like 4-H.

“Typically there isn't any place for kids to come and do this,” she said. “It's an awesome opportunity for kids who want to have that kind of lifestyle but can't afford it.”

Mosley was “born into 4-H,” which she sees as an extended family. “I'm still best friends with one of the girls I met in 4-H when I was four years old,” she said. All three of her kids went through 4-H and Mosley said each learned valuable skills they are still applying to their professional lives. “A lot of 4-H kids are now parents who have their own kids in the club now. It's a tradition.”

4-H was established more than a century ago and is now the nation's largest youth development organization, with more than six million members across the country. Local clubs like North Country help train those who might be future farmers or ranchers, but Mosley said that's far from the main objective.

“4-H is not just all cows and cooking,” she said, adding that there are more than 200 projects that kids can work on in fields like photography, leadership, robotics and shooting. If there isn't an area that interests a club member, Mosley said kids can create their own self-determined project, as long as it fits into the frame of teaching them life skills.

“This teaches them record keeping, goal setting, time management - just being responsible for something other than themselves,” she said.

The North Country 4-H club meets on the second Sunday of each month. For more information contact Gina Mosey at 509-953-3410 or via e-mail at [email protected].

Ryan Lancaster can be reached at [email protected].