Ep. 10 - Looking Back at 2025, Highlights and Failures

This is the season finale. Anna and Tyler look back over the program year for 2025 and discuss some of their program successes and the not so successful programs.  They give highlights for 4-H, Ag, and FCS.  A few funny things that have happened.  Maybe even discuss future educational programs planned in 2026.

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University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Website

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Transcript

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Welcome back to Stone County Extension Saves the World. It's our season finale. We've made it through a whole 10 episodes, one of them being a kind of a special audio release only. So if you're watching on YouTube, you're like, where's the?

Episode 7.

Episode 7. Our 4-H kids, they recorded a little bit and they forgot to turn the camera on. So it was audio only. But it was good. It was good. They're interesting. We'll have to get them back. Four season finale, we thought, well, why don't we just go through and talk about some of our highlights throughout the year. Program successes, good programs. Maybe any ideas we've got for the next year. And thinking of my successes brings up a memory of one thing is it was a successful program back, what was it, three years ago? We had a drought.

The drought meeting.

Yeah.

The drought meeting.

The drought meeting. I can't, it was three years ago, wouldn't it?

I believe so. It was in September, I think. And we've had.

July, maybe?

Well, I thought it was fall. We've had some really dry end of summer, fall.

Yeah, the past, well, whatever it was, the like 3 years ago is what I'm thinking. We had a pretty bad drought during the middle of the summer. And so I was like, let's do a program. about what guys can do, to kind of alleviate this drought. Some practices like, getting a sacrificial field, that's where you're going to just keep them and feed them in that field while you allow the others to rest and regrow or how to, conserve your hay. Maybe, we just cut hay and rather than saving that hay, what if we stick them in a sacrificial field and just feed hay during this dry period, during a drought? Those are some of the practices we kind of talked about. But the goal of this meeting was to tell these guys about the practices, and we'd sent out postcards and I had 40 or 50 people.

It was a. And you had Danny Griffin from Van Buren County and Kenny Simon.

Danny Griffin, ag agent over from Van Buren County and Kenny Simon who was, he's at the time he had a different title. He was like a program associate to Dr. John Jennings. Now he's the forage instructor is what he is now. But Kenny Simon come and he was talking about planting annuals, I think, and how to extend grazing during this drought. Whatever it was he was talking about, we each had a portion that we were talking. I talked first, then Danny, then Kenny to end us up. And so, like, after I get done doing my talk, we start hearing this really loud siren. And it sounds like it's right outside the fair building. And so we go outside and I kind of open the door and peek and there's just this guy sitting on a Camboda side by side and he's got his phone, a siren blaring and he's like videoing me. And so I kind of look at him and I just kind of shut the door and go back inside.

Oh, just forget this.

Yeah. And he turns the siren off and We go about the program and everybody you could kind of tell was like, what was it? What's going on? And so here Danny gets through his talk and Kenny's going and we're about to be done. Like he's been talking for about 15 minutes. Well, here comes that siren again, really loud. And then the guy comes in like he's carrying, it looked to me like a Bible. And he comes in the meeting, looks like he was wanting to say something. And so everybody, 40 people are all kind of sitting there watching this guy walk up to the front of our meeting. And Kenny, you could tell he starts, me and Danny try to cut this guy off. Because imagine the sirens blaring. Kenny's up there trying to talk about annuals for planting. He's like, I've just got a couple of more slides. And he started speeding up. And you could tell he's getting nervous. This guy's making everybody nervous.

Yeah, everybody was nervous. It's a cat and a room full of rocking chairs.

My brother-in-law, I was kind of sitting by him and my brother-in-law knew who the guy was, just some, he's some local.

Local guy.

Local guy. He's like, oh yeah, he probably bought the side by side from Matt, but he's like, oh, it's just them, you know?

Yeah, if you knew him, it made sense.

And so he comes in there and interrupts us and finally Danny gets kind of mad and he goes, sir, sir, can you go shut that off? We're trying to have a drought forage meeting. And finally the guy, he never did say nothing, but he kind of gave up on wanting to talk and went and shut it off and left. But afterwards, everybody's like, what was that, man? We were all nervous. We didn't know what was gonna happen. And Kenny was like, yeah, I got real nervous as I was talking. I didn't know what was gonna happen. And then I sent out an evaluation to everybody. And my brother-in-law put on there, he's like, I'll never attend another one of your meetings because you didn't let that guy talk. But we've had some interesting things happen over. And so this year, was it successful or not?

I believe so. I feel like we had a great year this year.

We had a longer year, used to. A longer program year. Longer program year. We used to run from October through September as our program year. Well, this year we've changed it to go on a calendar year, calendar year from January to December. And so they just extended our program year. So yeah, once successful, we started this podcast. That's quite successful. I guess before we get really into it, let's talk about this.

So all three of us in the office got an excellent gift from the Wyman's. Thank you very much. And we've got these super cool cups and they've personalized them. We've got 4-H on them, Arkansas. And then I have the cooking club and then we've got WEP. So it has a duck on there. And I got a dairy cow on here too for livestock skills and then a cute little charm. I love it.

I got 4-H stuff and then with WEP and they put deer on mine.

Yeah.

It's a nice buck there. And then looks like a shape of a bluegill, wouldn't you say?

Yes. I would.

And then Arkansas, yeah.

We love it. Thank you.

Thanks A lot. So our 4-Hers got it for us. Yeah, and I said their name, the Wyman's. And I'm just going to say, the rest of you got to step it up. Just kidding.

No.

We appreciate this.

We do. We do. We appreciate anything we do.

So that was a success. We can say we're They like us enough that they thought of us.

Thought of us at Christmas. We appreciate that.

Well, one, speaking of, we were last year WEP state champions in both junior and senior.

Yeah.

We got to go to the national contest for WEP. WEP is Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Program. But yeah, we got to go to Tennessee. I don't know what we placed. We didn't place in the top five. So I'm just going to say we placed 6th place in the nation because no one knows.

No one to refute.

No one to refute. But that was a real fun trip.

And that's such a good program. We have always a good turnout for that. And we practice and the kids learn a lot whether they go to the contest or not.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. We'll be wondering if they do it this next year since we're without a wildlife specialist right now. But I do like doing that program.

It is fun. I've learned a lot myself. Well, I learn a lot in all these programs that we have. and meet with the kids.

You can see background, if you've never noticed before, we've got in 2024, we had some kids that competed in the state livestock skill-a-thon and state meat ID, and we won both those contests. Got to go to Kansas City. What one was it?

Manhattan, yeah. That was the American Royal.

American Royal.

We got a little flag from that.

And then?

That was with meats.

Then we went to Louisville to the, what do they call it?

North American International Livestock Exposition.

That one was.

I can't remember if it's Nall or Nail, so I'm just like, I'll just give you the whole name. That was great because.

We saw some sheep that we, there's not a lot of sheep around here. Most of them, if they are.

This one was the size of a pony. I wanted to take it home. Yeah, it was really neat. And all the different types of shows and they just had a room that was like, it was like a ball stadium size, full of sheep. And then on the other side at the time, they had the Shorthorn show and the Black Angus. And so we set in on that too. And what was cool about that is all ages were showing. you'd see the youngest of young and older. And I just, I love that. I thought that's really cool.

Yeah, and they showed, like doing different showmanship styles. Like there was some, they were like tag teaming. one person was like setting up the goat's feet and the other person was holding. Sheep. Yeah. What did I say?

Goat.

Yeah, whatever we watched. I forget, sheep. They were setting up the sheep.

They were interesting.

It's like a 2A team. It was neat.

Oh, we went and ate at my first K-Pot.

Yeah.

Oh, and we went to Churchill Downs. That was fun.

Was that in? Would that be in this program year?

Yeah, it was. They didn't win their state contest in the program year, but we went to the nationals in the program year.

We went to the nationals in the program year. So yeah, it counts best of 2025.

Absolutely.

So it counts.

Well, it was fun. I enjoy it.

We got to go to a couple national contests with 4-H.

And we appreciate those kids that allow us to get to do that.

Yeah, we, I'm trying to think what else 4-H we did. We had the big outdoor day. We kind of a failure with that. We had to move it from Blanchard to Mammoth Springs.

We wouldn't call it a failure, but we hate that we didn't have our Blanchard. hard blintered experience. But hopefully now that it's going to be a state park, we'll be back and going in the rec area again.

Well, the problem was like, it stormed. Like, what happened? We like planned to do it, sent out the e-mail about it, and then it like tornadoed or flooded.

Well, it tornadoed and then it flooded within just a few weeks.

Yeah.

And then we started hearing reports of the damage at the.

Yeah, and that it wasn't.

One of our friends works. Yeah, one of our friends works for the Forest Service or a couple friends and and he let us know that. You talk about a, we were talking about earlier about like what are failures? Well, I wouldn't say this is a failure, but one year we were going to our outdoor day and just kind of like a freak little storm come through. We typically have our outdoor day in June and it knocked the power out over. I think even my house might have been out, but it was just a small little area. Well, they apparently aren't allowed to have the bathrooms open. So that was great fun. We had, I think that's the year we had over almost like 120 people, I think, that year. And here we are. Where are you going to go?

Yeah, 120 people without access to a bathroom.

I think there was a portage on up the road. And then me and Whitney, my daughter snuck off to go use the bathroom one time. And some people started around the corner and here I am like looking at him through the weeds.

Oh no.

Oh man. And so So a funny joke after that, Billy was like, are we going to have using the bathroom in the woods class?

Yeah, that'd be a good educational program, how to-?

Poop in the woods.

How to poop in the woods and leave no trace?

I had a lot of hand sanitizer posted. Anytime, because I usually do campfire cooking, and I was like, all right, everybody, line up with the hand sand before we get started. that was interesting. But the sad thing about it is it shut the cave down that day because there were lights.

I was thinking, again, not necessarily a failure because we had good attendance for what it was, but my hay verification field day.

Oh, man.

So was again, I've mentioned it before and working with this producer throughout the summer to help improve his hay quality, hay yield by following the recommendations on our practices. This is our first year with them and we're hoping to, you know, build something and get good Bermuda grass back in there, produce good quality hay. But we worked with this guy all summer and it never fails with this verification project and farming in general. Stuff doesn't go exactly according to plan. So it rained pretty much all spring to the point of like we're gonna grow really good grass this year because it was like raining every week. So much that guys, this guy that we worked with didn't make his, start his first cutting until June and that's pretty much a month behind.

And it rained a lot in June too.

Yeah, it rained a lot in June. So he was able to get 2 cuttings off of this field and then the water shut off. It didn't rain at all. And then, so we're like, well, we got to do something. Let's plan. I wanted to do a field day and we had planned this big deal to bring out some drone operators, like show how the spray drones work, show how you can use drones to capture imagery for your field to use. And we're going to have demonstrations of those drones. Brought in Jason Davis. He's real good with that type of stuff. Had him come down and then.

Oh, and the first service bank.

Yeah, the first service bank.

Dinner and Brad and Dad's.

We did Brad and Dad's and we're going to, it's going to be a big deal. Well, It started at 4, and about 3 o'clock, it started storming. It hadn't rained all summer, but it came a downpour. Like, I was like, we're doing it no matter what. We're not canceling it. And so I was like, we're just going to stand out in the rain and talk. Well, luckily, Jerry had talked to Brad and Dad's and they said we could just come over there. So we were all 25 of us piled in there and did our little meeting. It was successful.

Oh, what happened to you right before the meeting started?

Yeah, I'd forgot. I've got a scar. Like I was trying, it's raining and I was running inside. Brad and Dad's trying to get out of the rain. Well, like I went to round the corner and it slipped and I just, I mean, went feet in the air and like just busted on the ground. I dropped my papers and all this stuff.

I was in my car washing it all. It was hilarious. I felt bad for laughing, but I couldn't help it. I knew you'd laughed at me if I had done it.

Yeah, I mean, I cut my hand. I was bleeding. I'm just like trying to.

You're like, what a day?

Yeah.

What A day.

But it worked out. Like both of our district director, Sherry and our district director and Brad, our associate district director, come down and they help pass out the food. But I thought it was a successful program, even though I crashed.

I'm glad you had it anyway.

Yeah, I think it was a good deal. I mean, It snowed in my PAT and I still had that. I had like 3 guys.

Oh, I forgot about that in February. Yeah. And it had already snowed.

Yeah.

And they came anyway. They needed...

Well, I was thinking, I'll go there and if they show up, we'll do it. If no one shows up, I'll go home. And a few, like three people showed up and we did it, but...

You get bonus points for...

Get bonus points.

Doing things in the weather. I didn't think I was gonna make it to best care this past year because my daughter Whitney had a ball game in Melbourne. And this was a Friday night in March. I think it was, I can look on the calendar. Yeah, March 14th. And everybody had said, watch for storms, watch for storms. Well, I ended up, she stayed with my mom in town. Brandon was on his way to Mississippi to go turkey hunting with our good friends. I'm home alone, just me and my dog Stormy. And I start watching and it's like, kind of an idea of how storms are going to travel. And I was watching it and I was like, this is getting more serious and more serious. And then I went outside and it just felt awful outside. I've never really experienced quite the pressure of a tornado coming. And me and Brennan and also my in-laws have storm shelters. So I kind of put out on my Facebook, hey, anybody need a place to stay? And then it just kept getting more intense. So I started on a gathering mission. I was like, took me a while to get all the guns found, all the wallets found, all my good jewelry found. Like I just was squirreling up. I ended up getting the little pup and the other dog and I had them in the basement. And then the last minute I had a neighbor show up. And a funny thing, it's not necessarily that funny, but I looked down, I have this big pot on my porch And that's where one of my cats was riding it out. He was riding it out in a little pot. But anyway, a tornado hit within two miles of the house and it went over the road and it blew all those trees onto the road and stuff. And I was like, well, of course I didn't have power either. And I thought, I don't know if I'm going to make it tomorrow. I was trying to think if I went through Harriet and I went around, like how would I get to Clinton? But they had the roads cleaned up because I left at 6 that next morning, but I could hear chainsaws all night. So I didn't know if I was going to make it to best care.

Made it.

I made it. Made it.

Look at you. What other successes do we have? We did our little farmstead seminar this year. Yeah, that was our first one of those. how many people?

If you add the kids, we had 30, which they were really intent on hearing Mark Russell talk about horses and different things with that, because they're on our little horse judging team. But we got really good feedback because I thought we had kind of discussed like short sessions, long sessions. And what we learned from those that attended is they're really wanting some in-depth information. And And that was great feedback from them, but everybody stuck around well.

We did a farmstead seminar to kind of, promote extension throughout. We've got a lot of people that we call homesteaders that have moved in here wanting to, you know, raise their own food.

Homesteaders, hobby farmers, small-scale farming, urban farming.

Just trying to reach that audience. We hosted this farmstead seminar. I think we talked, had Andrew Bolton come in, who's the poultry specialist, and he talked about raising backyard poultry. We had our health specialist, animal health specialist, Kirsten Midkiff come in and she talked about some, you know, animal health, vaccinations, some of these. I think she touched on the Asian. She did, yes. And then we had Mark Russell come in and talk about horses. And then me and you talked. I talked about pastures.

And no-till gardening.

And no-till gardening.

I talked about farm stress and then sourdough.

And I think it was good.

And we had people come from over 2 hours away and it was wonderful having all them. And so we look forward to having that again this next year. We'll reach out a little bit and get, let us know what topics you might like at that farmstead seminar.

Yeah, we'll definitely do that again because I think we can grow it.

Yes. And we hope to, one of our goals in that was utilizing extension resources to hit those different audiences. And I've been to a few, I hate to just hate on things, but I've been to a few homestead conferences that weren't they didn't have just the best information or enough information or enough advertising or it just wasn't quite and then I've then I've been to some that are amazing. Like I would definitely want to add that in. But so we're hoping to utilize extension resources for our farmstead seminar.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. Another deal we did together was we do the asparagus class. We started it a few years ago when we started doing these special homesteading where I'd teach topic, Anna'd teach topic, and we've kind of done asparagus.

That's what we've pretty much done every year.

Yeah, and this year what we did was Anna talked about, well, I'll let her tell you what she did.

Well, we pickled asparagus, talked about harvesting it. And this year we pickled it in the past. We've pressure canned it, but I knew that we could have a larger audience. if we pickled it and water bathed it. And while we went through the whole class on how to water bath and it was in the cookers, then everyone went over to the community garden.

Yeah, and that's a program I'll talk about here, I guess, in a little bit. This is something we started this past year with the Master Gardeners. But part of that, I was like, well, as part of building the community garden, I could put in a couple of asparagus beds and we can add to it year to year. And I think I did a four by, I think they're 4 by 9 or 4 by 10s. And just built a little type bed and then we went out and talked about planting, talked about harvesting one thing with planting asparagus is it's a perennial. It's going to come back and if you take care of it, could last 20-ish years. but you want it out of the way of other stuff because it is going to be coming back year to year. So we put it kind of out of the way and also where we could add more beds. We planted some Mary Washington and I think was it Jersey Giant and They come up. But the thing about harvesting, with harvesting asparagus, you can't harvest too much those first like 3 or so years.

Tell me, I know we about killers.

We want to leave enough for them to create carbohydrates to store in the crown there, and that'll allow them to regrow. So that first year, you really shouldn't harvest much. Then second year, you only really want to harvest about one month out of the growing year. Same with the third. And then that fourth year, you should be able to get a full harvest, but it'll be neat how this continues over the next few years.

It'll be nice when eventually we can harvest right there from the bed.

I've got plans for that thing. I guess I can.

Yeah, I do want to say before you go into that a little bit on asparagus, we did the Grow Your Own Groceries webinar about asparagus this year, and that was super cool. And so that's another resource for you. to sign up for that. And that was great. I learned on asparagus, like you, I pop the bottom off on the bottom where it's like woody and bends instead of cutting it. so where it's going to be too tough. And then you can store that in a couple inches of cold water in the refrigerator. But I never read to add like a plastic over the top to keep the edge ends from drying out. So I learned that while I was researching for teaching about cooking it. I learned a little more about keeping it fresher while you're storing it. More on the community garden. What are your plans this next year?

So it was one of my big projects this year, I'd say it's successful, was I've been, since I've been here, it's kind of been a goal of mine to get a community garden started. And so me and the Master Gardener group here in Stone County decided that we were all going to work together to help create a community garden that we can, you know, not only bring the community closer together, but teach, you know, those horticulture best management practices, do some trials and demonstrations. And so how we kind of went about it was like, I was like, what we can do is, as we build this thing, let's just make it a class, And so we did. class on how to build a raised bed garden. And I put them to work when they showed up and we built like four or five community.

Yeah, you built different types.

Yeah, we built different types. Like we used some with treated wood, which used to be, they said, don't use treated wood in a, like a raised bed. But with the new, how they treat it with copper. It's just mostly just copper. They say it's relatively safe now and you can actually use some treated wood as like a raised bed material. So we tried some with treated wood, some with the untreated, just to show you the difference in how long it could last over the next couple of years. Then when we built one out of concrete blocks, it took 32 of them. They're all 4 by 8s. We ended up building like 7 beds this year. And then we built one that's real tall, like for handicap access. But.

Now didn't you do Hugelkultur?

Yeah, we also did a Hugelkultur bed where we dug down and buried some logs and I actually planted in it this year. They say it's better to wait a year, but I planted some tomatoes and peppers in it and they did pretty good. But We started this community garden and it's right next to our greenhouse. And we had, I think, two or three people participate from the community in it. And then the rest we used as like demonstration or teaching. Some of the master gardeners had their own bed. Deborah was like, I want it every year. That's the best garden I've ever grown.

Yeah, she had an excellent looking. She had eggplant, tomatoes.

She really liked, she did it in the concrete block one and she really likes it. She's like, we should build some more of them. I'm like, what was the most expensive one? Like, we could build five of the others compared to the one made out of concrete blocks.

But that one probably will last the longest.

And we got dirt. The county.

Yeah, I filled one of them.

Yeah, the county agreed to haul some good dirt in here. We put good topsoil and did about a 70 to 30% soil, topsoil to compost mixture. County hauled that for us. We've still got a pretty good pile of dirt over there. And then the county actually come and leveled off. So my plans for it is to get some like berry plants out there, like blueberries, blackberries, and then get some fruit trees out there. And that way I could do all my like pruning classes right out there rather than having to go out to the farm.

Yeah, I need you to go to my orchard to do some pruning.

Yeah, we can. I think we talked about we can make a video this next year. We'll go over to Anna's and I'll prune. What do you got? Apples.

I have Asian persimmons, pears, three different kinds of apples, some cherries, even though I said I shouldn't. And then I do have a mulberry, but I don't know if he needs, I don't know if he needs pruned or not. And then I planted some paw paws, but they were, They had a tough summer.

Were they in the shade?

Probably not enough. I did plant them with trees around, but...

The pawpaws, they're like the only native fruit, I think, here. They get these big old green-looking fruits.

I've never seen fruits.

I know where some are in the wild, but They got seeds in them, but they say they taste kind of like between a banana and mango-ish. And it's pretty good, but they grow in the understory of the forest. Well, I painted them like that.

Kind of under a hickory tree, but then a tree kind of died and so it opened up a little more sun than I like. And then one of my Asian persimmons didn't make it. So I'm gonna have to get another one, but I didn't know those were a thing until Deborah brought one. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we did. I'm going to order another. And then I have some blackberries. And they had a tough summer too. But I did, after talking to you, I did fertilize everything and I could see a difference there. And I do spray, but I do need to get my schedule a little more set for the year.

Yeah, but if you are growing pawpaws first like few years, they need to be completely shaded.

Yeah, lesson learned. I thought I had them shaded enough, but I probably should have put some.

They can tolerate a little bit.

Yeah, they're about 3 feet tall, but they probably needed maybe some. I should have put up some black cloth or something.

Yeah, that's what I've seen people do is put up shade cloth over the top of them and probably help them. What other successes do you have this year?

Had a lot of sourdough classes this year. Had how to train the trainer with that. I had one class and I had 32 people attend in Stone County for Sourdough. And then I've taught, well, me and Leanne teach together. So taught in Stone County and then had a few classes in Baxter County and at the library there, Van Buren County. I think I might have been in Sharp County. I've been all around teaching about that sourdough. And so I've actually gotten a little better at making my bread. We've added a whole bunch of different recipes, but the bread seems to be the most difficult. And so that's always a good success for me. I'm trying to think what else?

We do a few multi-county programs, some that were successful. We do our Little Red River Beef and Forage Conference. I say that failure on that was it actually did get snowed out. So we didn't have the Little Red River beef conference.

There was a lot that got canceled that week because of that snow.

But what we did start back this year, we went on our, we go on a national, go to another state, beef and forage tour. And it's several of us county agents that get some of our producers and we get a bus. And this year we went to Louisiana, toured some ranches down there. We went to one place that they were, they had a crawfish farm and they did a crawfish boil for us.

The photo of that looked, if there was smell-o-vision, it would have been good.

It was really good. but we used to do it like every year. I think we talked that maybe we'll start doing it like a out of Arkansas trip, maybe every other year. But in between that, we thought there's a lot of stuff here in Arkansas. So we talked about maybe doing, just an in-state, going to places here in-state. It might be a little bit easier than rather to have getting, bids on a bus and getting all this.

Yeah, at least not every year.

And then we also did our small room in it conference. Shoot, the first year we did that, it was over here and it seems like it moves further and further away. I was like, I got to do some small room in it. But one year we did it in Stone County. Next year it was at Clinton. Next year it was at Damascus. And then Last year, was last year Damascus? It may have been. But that's another multi-county is like Stone County, White County, Cleburne County. I think Faulkner, Van Buren, and Conway County are involved in that one. That one's always a good program. I think I talked at this one this year, talked about marketing your own meat. If you wanted to say sell directly to consumer. There's a couple of ways here in Arkansas how the rules or the laws are is if you're selling the individual cuts, you have to have that meet inspected, butchered and inspected by a USDA facility. And there's only like two or three here in the state of Arkansas. They did make a law to where it can be sold when it's state inspected. I think that got passed, but.

Where's, I'm not sure really.

We're not.

I don't think we have one in the area.

Not one in the area. It'd be closer just to take it to a USDA facility. But you have to be inspected if you're selling individual cuts. And then if you're wanting to say sell without it getting inspected, you're technically you sell the shares of the animals. So I'm going to just sell the animal to somebody and then they'll pay for the butcher.

Commonly quarter halves and holes with beef, but might be a little different with small ruminants.

Yeah, it's the same.

Well, I mean, I don't know if you'd get a quarter, but. And then we had a few 4-Hers that attended some of the small ruminant butchering type workshops that were in the state through extension and they seemed like they made some really cool things on there.

Yeah. I was going to mention the plans for next year for the Little Red River Beef Conference. We're going to turn it into a series. I think we're doing March, April, May. And so one month, I think we're going to talk about like animal health. We're talking about the tick, the new Asian longhorn tick and the diseases it carries, that thyleria. I think we're going to have talk about the screw worm, just cattle management. Hopefully if you come to all three of those deals, you could, we can get you BQA certified and is what we're talking about at the end of it. You know, if you attend all three classes, you'll be BQA certified. But that'll be in March, April, May of next year. That'll be good to get back. That'll be good.

This last year, We added back dairy foods. That's a Farm Bureau contest. We hadn't had that in a while. And we had good attendance. And I was just kind of thinking overall, you know, I started a cooking club, had excellent attendance for that. And we've taught them some tough things, haven't we?

Yeah.

We've cooked with charcoal. We've made fried pies. I get to send all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, the fried pies was, I was like, what were you thinking?

I don't know. Well, then you said we should make tortillas. Oh my goodness.

I don't know what I was.

I was just, this is what I'm thinking. I want them to learn a real skill. I want them to have left that class and to be more self-sufficient. But anyway, so we've had good turnout for that. was a good add this year. And then just, I feel like we've had more participation. Like we had a lot more in Ross photography. I expect to have that same energy this year. We were already talking about it, getting everybody thinking about it.

We've actually got clubs meeting again.

Yeah, that's nice.

After COVID, that took a long while for clubs to get back to leaving. So we've got some volunteers that are meeting.

Yeah, we've got Dodd Mountain Community Club. They're actually have a meeting today. And then we recently had the Fox Community Club formed. And then I've got my cooking club and We got to get back with our archery, but we're real proud to have meetings.

Yeah, we will start doing archery after the first of the year. It's just getting my schedule lined up.

Yeah, we might have to do a different schedule getting you going.

Yeah. get that going. I think that'll be successful. We've been going to the 4-H, or not the 4-H, the Mountain View Middle School, Fun Friday, and we've taught archery three times? Two times.

We've done that two times. We did stomp rockets. And we didn't get any ceiling tiles that day. Yay. And then we did wagon masters too. So appreciate Ms. Marshall for having us.

We went to Timbo to their stem at night and we took the rockets to the rescue or the stomp rockets. And we had them outside and then it kind of was starting to get dark I guess and we moved inside or.

I think we were trying to get more centrally located.

We were trying to get more centrally located so we. kids started launching rockets inside and a few of them got stuck in the ceiling.

The trajectory got a little too straight up.

But they were nice, said these type of things happen.

Hey, the kids had fun. They learned something. We had some taking pictures because they were one to make them for home. So yeah, it was good.

Anything else you want to highlight? Any particular Big failures.

I don't usually like to highlight those. I don't have any just one.

Look at how I messed up.

I don't have any that I really want to talk about. I don't have a good meltdown every now and then.

I'm supposed to know a little bit about horticulture and stuff. And I participated in the statewide horticulture demo with okra. And so I planted all the seeds and stuck them in the greenhouse. And they, I don't know what happened. They didn't germinate. Only like 1 variety germinated. And then I stuck them, planted them outside, and then it flooded in the spot where I planted them.

I was supposed to not remember the okra.

Yeah, it stayed flooded for like a week and killed all those plants. And so I didn't, I just had to send in. I failed at the. That's my alarm for kid pickup time, but I've got a little bit of time.

You got a little bit of leeway.

What? It don't start moving till like 3:25.

I'll leave and I'm always at the end of the line in line for 15 minutes. Well, you need to try the okra again because I want to pick, I want us to pickle some more okra.

Yeah, I think that pickled okra recipe, I can tell it's going to be good. We just got to get good.

Yeah, we got given some okra, but I think it was a little, it was a little past prime, it was a little.

Yeah. That's going to be one of my goals this next year is really get that community garden and actually...

We can have a pickled okra class if we have enough okra. Yeah, that's what I like about the community garden is how we'll be able to, you know, build on things.

And in that and partner with the greenhouse, another deal did that seed starting class.

Yeah, that's always really successful. And y'all made your own mix.

Yeah, we make our show how to make your own like potting mix out of peat moss.

And another good thing about that class is we're bringing in people, our joint classes seem to bring in more people we've not seen before, not that we do not absolutely love the impact of having people over and over, but it's nice to know that we're still bringing in different audiences here and there. So that's a win. I feel like we've had that as a win this year.

Yeah. I want to tell my funny story about pruning.

No. Okay, sure. Go right ahead.

Do you want to give some background on it?

Okay, Well, I don't know what all background I can give, but what I will say is that Tyler come in so frustrated one day after helping a certain group that had planted a tree in a public place, printing their tree. And that was real, like a ceremony type moment for this tree. And he was explaining that this one lady had kind of harassed him a little bit. And I laughed because I knew that person was a person living with dementia. But I knew that and Tyler had no idea.

Yeah.

So that's kind of the...

Okay, so here's what happened. They contacted me. They needed to prune this tree they had planted. And I get out there and There's several of them there. And so I'm like, well, as I make a cut, I'll explain why I'm taking this one off, why I'm doing this, why I'm doing this. Because on the happen chance this tree ends up dying, I don't want them to be like, well, we had him come out and prune and now it's dead. So I was like, well, I'm going to take this off and it'll, you know, I make this cut here because It looks better aesthetically between the space and the branches. And if I make the cut here, it'll just heal right over it. Like I'm explaining like in depth like that. And so I'm telling them before each cut I'm gonna make. Well, this lady was like, I don't know why you have him here. I don't know why you have him here. This tree looks so good. He's just gonna just mess it up. And I'd make a cut and she'd go, oh gosh, he's destroying this tree. And so I'm sitting there and I'm explaining why I'm making this cut. And she's like, I make another cut. And she's like, some people just gotta show how smart they are. Don't, you can tell he don't know nothing. What is it? Oh, oh no, it was so beautiful. And he, oh no. And so I kind of finished up and...

Oh, tell about the picture.

And so I finish up and so I've aggravated this lady by pruning on this tree. Well...

That you were asked to prune.

That I was asked to prune. Well, then she's like, well, they're like, let's all take a picture. And so we are all standing there and I'm standing in the photo bomb and the trees in the background behind us. and the lady's not taking the photo and I can tell. And she's, they're like, well, you got to press the button. You got to press the button. And she's kind of sitting there and I kind of like step out of the frame. She's like, that's better. And then takes the photo. That's better. That's better. Yeah, I step out of the photo and she's like, that's better. What else did I say she'd said to me.

I can't remember what else, but.

It kind of made me feel a little bit better when I found out that.

Yeah, that she was living with dementia. Yeah. Because you thought she was just being mean.

Yeah, being mean to me. I was like, I do know what I'm talking about.

I promise.

I promise.

I'm a professional. I promise. I laughed and laughed. I thought that was hilarious. Yeah.

Some people just want to show how smart they are. Oh, no. Every time I'd make a cut. Oh. It was so beautiful.

Is it still alive?

It's still alive. I thought, I think it looks pretty good. I didn't cut off near what I wanted to. I thought about sneaking back when they weren't there and just kind of making it look nice. But I didn't. As far as anybody knows. All right. Well, season finale. You got anything else? you want to talk about?

I've been amazed that I've been able to talk at all on this podcast. I think we've just had to forget that we're being videoed and how much I say and okay and all right.

We did that money counting class, I remember.

Yeah, that was good. it's a success is on that one is I was like, let's do a money camp. And I want to teach them how to count back change, pet peeve, by the way, because I learned how to count back change. And I'm worried that no one knows how to count back change anyway. And we were working on it and Tyler did get a little mean during bingo because you had to count the change. And then one of them, Cameron, didn't want to count it.

Yeah.

Because she had one that had a lot, but you had to count in order to get to bingo. we were going around and I was working with each kid and we got to this one and demonstrate how she did. I was like, you got that right. And how would she was like, yes.

Oh yeah. Like, yeah, she'd counted out her change, did it correctly. And then it was like, yeah, you got it right. And like turned around and she's like, and I was like, yeah. You got it.

And she was one of our youngest ones there that day. So I was proud of that.

You also, you didn't mention, well you've mentioned on the podcast, starting youth leadership as a win.

Yeah, I started that last year.

Started it, I guess. Yeah, started it, started it back. It was a thing, but then you revamped it and made it cool.

Yeah, I brought it back. I made it cool.

Made it cool. And I said, I'm not helping you at all.

Yeah, Tyler, his duties include delivering pizzas and chauffeur service. But So that needed to come back and I'm glad I brought it back.

And it's a good program and it will be good. Like I think you're definitely going to make a lot of impact because what we're talking, you don't think about the impact you make in these kids that, oh, maybe they went into this because they were in 4-H. 4-H is a good program. Learn by doing.

And people say, there's not a lot of opportunity around for our youth. guess what? There is. And we are a provider of a good part of it. If you want whatever you want to go for, we'll help you do that here. And we like to go places and have a good time.

Yeah, and we like to learn and we like to teach. And we like well-behaved kids.

Thankfully, we give out a lot of those. And I feel like we're kids.

And when they're not well-behaved, I just ignore it.

Well, this is what I tell the parents when they're worried about their kids being wild. I say, I don't mind wild, but I can't handle disrespectful. So I was like, let kids be kids, let them make a mess with flour and do all kinds of stuff as long as they're being cordial, they're learning that way. And I say that because if anybody dealt with me as a child, They'd understand.

Well, it's been a good year.

It's been a good year. Here's to another good year. 2026.

2026. Yep. We'll be back after the first of the year with new episodes.

And get ready for guests.

Yeah, it should be good. Yeah. Or it won't be. All right. Got anything else?

No, I think I'm good.

All right. Blessings.

Peace and blessings. Peace and blessings.

I'm leaving that in.

Thanks.

Yep.