Ep. 17- Crape Murderers on the Loose!

This episode of Stone County Extension Saves the World, Tyler and Anna talk about the unsightly crime of crape murder that goes on in every town around America.  Improperly pruned crape myrtles , also called crape murder is hard to fix, but easy to avoid.  Tyler talks about the process of pruning crape myrtles.  

Anna and Tyler give updates on programs going on across all program areas.  Anna talks about if people want to help the youth, what does 4-H need from folks. The answer may surprise you, as it is the most valuable resource that someone donate.

Transcript

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All right, we're back at it again. It's that time of year.

Yeah, spring forward's coming.

So the time you hear this, by the time this release is probably this weekend. It's spring tour, spring tourward, spring tourward.

Last week it was me, this week it's you.

Yeah.

I'm not a huge fan of the first week after. set time change, but Brandon loves spring forward. But I do love the extra time in the evenings.

Yeah, I like it that it'll be daylight longer.

I do too. It's just a tough adjustment for us, not morning people.

And I am not a morning person at all. I'm a night owl.

Yep, same night owls at my house, every one of us.

Yeah. Well, I've heard something crime crimes are happening.

Well, I've seen some interesting things, but what crime are you referring to?

It's not a, probably not a real crime, but I've seen somebody that they were out committing crape myrtle, crape murder.

They're myrtle in the crepes.

They're myrtle in the crepes. Crape, crape myrtle murder. Crape murder. Goes by many names, many names. Dang. You cast a curse on me after we made fun of you for the peepers comments. Now I can't talk, but no.

Good enough for y'all, because that's what you made the clip.

Yeah.

You're real.

Yeah, but what we want to discuss today is a serious topic. Crape murder. For all you crepe myrtlers out, crepe murders.

Murdlers.

Murdlers. Yeah. Turtle Murdlin. Have you ever heard of that? Is on the, you remember that show that was like, it was a Japanese game show and they'd like dub it. Like it was discussed.

Yes.

What was that? They had someone on.

It was like Wipeout or something.

I can't remember.

Yeah.

But it was like one of the people was a turtle murderer.

Because they fell into the water or something. Oh man.

Sidetrack, sidebar, crepe myrtling. It's not good, crepe murder.

So tell the people what crepe murder is.

It's pruning your crepe myrtles wrong. Essentially, like if you.

Down to nothing.

Well, many people, I think they do it because they want to limit the height on their crepe murders. Crepe myrtles. I'm going to have to, we're just going to call them crepes. From now on. You crape myrtles, people will just cut them off like a hedge where they just cut them off, leave little stems. Problem with that, when that flesh growth takes off in the spring, a bunch of branches will pop out. And what'll happen, it's called knuckling or pollarding. You get this big growth of new growth and growth in there where you made that cut and it just makes them look bad. I mean, once they flower out and they, may hang over, but throughout the rest of the year, when they're bare, you can see that huge knuckling and it just don't look good.

And I think people are cutting off those knuckles year after year.

They cut down below it. Say you did have a crape myrtle with that knuckling. That is how you'd want to try to fix it. You cut off below that knuckle, let all that regrowth start, and then you go in there and you select one, 2 canes to be that your main deal. What you want a crape myrtle to look like is like a, how it was described to me is like the branches represent a vase and then you have your flowers like a bouquet at the top essentially is what you'd want.

That's kind of the shape you're going for.

That's the shape you'd want for crape myrtles. Also, people may plant, there's all sorts of different varieties, types of crape myrtles. There's bush types, there's tree types, and everything in between. Probably a lot of times people are putting crape myrtles in the wrong place, the wrong variety in the wrong place, and so they want to limit the height and they'll cut them back.

My mom has a beautiful one, but it's more like a tree and it's huge.

You want to select, like if you're wanting it to sit low around your house, you'd want to look into those varieties that are those low growing shrub type crape myrtles. If you're wanting like the tree type, look into the varieties that are tree types. They've got all sorts of colors. The blooms are all different colors. But this time of year is the time of year when we do want to go in and do pruning to our ornamentals. We've talked a little bit about pruning before, but crape myrtles, roses, before the spring really hits, we want to go in and do any cleanup, remove any dead, disease, damaged branches, and then shape up the tree or the bush. For crepe murals, usually like you want an odd number of limbs is what aesthetically looks the best. You know, five or seven or three limbs coming off. If you have How I heard it described, I think it was Janet Carson who used to be the Master Gardener coordinator. She says an even number of things look like they're just little soldiers lined up out there and it doesn't, like your eye, it looks funny. So odd numbers. look more aesthetically pleasing. And when we go in, after you've removed any of the dead, damaged, and diseased limbs, you want to look for any limbs that are growing back into the tree or growing somewhere where you don't want it to grow. We want to look as the branch grows or as that limb grows, is it going to rub or cross or touch another one? Because as the wind blows, that creates a place that'll be scabbed up or scarred. And that's where insects and disease come in. You may also notice this time of year coming up, like you, it looks like there's sootiness or black on the bark of your crape myrtles. And what that is, crape myrtle bark scale, and it's a little insect and they get on there and they they can eventually kill the tree because they smother it. But if you have that issue, like you're going out there and you're seeing like black on the bark or something weird looking, might be sticky somewhat, you probably got that crape myrtle bark scale and you'd want to treat for those. I think dormant oils are, this would be a time of year to treat. I think that's one of the recommendations is like a dormant oil or something like that or a horticultural oil. If you have that going on, be sure to contact your extension office. I can't think of products specific that target that off the top of my head. But This is the time of year when we want to take care of some of them ornamentals. Now you do have to kind of know, like flowering, when they flower, because that's going to kind of tell you about how you should prune them. Have I said this before? Yeah, you've talked a little bit about flowering. I think we can repeat ourselves because not everybody's going to watch ever or listen to ever podcast, but if you hit What was I saying?

About pruning based on when they flower. Yeah.

So pruning based on when they flower, if they're like spring flowering, you want to wait till after they flower and then go in and cut because then they'll regrow and that's what they bloom off in the growth. That'll bloom the next year. They bloom off of year growth. It has to be a year old. Whereas like crape myrtles, roses, they're going to bloom on new growth. So we can go in there and do a heavy pruning in dormancy. Wouldn't want to do it in the fall because that's when the time of year when a lot of fungal spores are floating around and if we're making cuts, we can spread diseases. So typically late dormancy, like this time of year before that flood, the spring, before that tree wakes up is when we'd want to go in and do a heavy pruning. You can do some light pruning like in the once they put on leaves and they're actively growing into the summer. But we're just making any like cuts, like any water spouts or suckers that pop up. You want to remove any of those because they're competing for nutrients. Any, you know, as a limb grows and then it starts growing in or crossing, you could go in and kind of shape it up. But We don't want to do crape murder. And I've always wanted to make a funny video about it. Like, here's my idea for, like, to do a real cheesy, like, if I can figure out how to shoot it black and white, you know, like, just imagine like wearing one of them old fedora hats and like smoking a pipe and be like, there's been a murder. The dramatic gopher sound place. Yeah. And then we go out and we don't like.

Oh, you have your huge magnifying glass.

We got our crime scene here. I wanted you to keep so and so out of my crime scene. That would be cheesy. Yeah.

It'd be funny.

And then we've, I can't believe someone watched sicko would do this. And then, figure it out. Figure out who did it. Who did it?

We'd find the weapon.

Yeah, that pair of loppers. I don't know how you would end it. So it'd have to be somewhat educational. How would we educate? I guess it's just don't do this.

Probably be the clink sound as you arrest your crape myrtler.

Yeah, but there, I mean, you see it all over. It's just, I don't think people really know how to prune crape myrtles. You don't just cut them, level them out and just cut them down. You want to be deliberate about where we're making cuts and which ones we want to remove. And I do pruning classes if, you know, I've done them before. I didn't this year because it's kind of like people losing interest, so like we've heard it before. But it's that time of year when...

I know where plenty are if anybody needs to come in and... and get a hands-on work.

Yeah, hands-on. That's how I try to do them. It's like, my goal is like, okay, I'm going to get everybody out there, we'll talk about it, and then they'll hop in and they'll prune and I can walk around. And every time what it usually ends up, sometimes they'll be practice.

The one time that I went, everybody had their own tree and was working on it.

Sometimes it feels like everybody just watches me do one and they're like, okay.

It's a lot easier watching someone else. And then when you're the one that's having to pick, you know, you're kind of got questions when you do it.

So I'm just like, yeah. You don't like to do great murder, but you like to just back and saw. I mean, you make it, I like to make it look good.

I think a lot of people, myself included, are just scared to take away too much. But then you got your crape myrtlers who do take away too much. So somewhere in the middle sounds like it's probably better.

Yeah, look up, you know, what is a crape myrtle supposed to look like? And train it to look that way by making cuts.

Yeah, and the ones that I've seen that have been done properly, they really are pretty.

And what else we got coming up?

We got our farmsteads. Well, you have something tomorrow. What do you got?

Not tomorrow, Friday.

Oh, Friday, that's right.

Yeah, oh, the Little Red River Beef and Forage Conference. That will be Friday, March 6th. The Mountaintop Cowboy Church in Heber Springs should be a pretty good program. We got Dr. James Mitchell coming on talking beef cattle market update, which Heard yesterday, a guy come in and he's like, fertilizer gone up.

Oh yeah. He's.

Like, we come in.

He sounds a little like Croy D. Mercer. Yeah.

What'd he say? Boss man here.

Yeah. And then he said, we're supposed to be lining you out. Yeah. Since I'm like, you don't listen. He's like, I heard women don't listen.

Yeah.

And I was like, that may or may not be true.

But he's like, price of fertilizer went up.

It doubled in two days.

Yeah. I mean, it's the time of year, you know, think supply and demand, all the row crop guys are probably getting into plant and getting ready to plant and purchase some fertilizer. but also the world events are happening as probably have some effect on that, probably somewhat too. But James Mitchell will be there, give a beef cattle market update, how the beef cattle market's looking, and give you some ideas that you can use, you know, information that you can use to make decisions, make plans. We're also talking about our hay verification fields, what we're seeing. I'll probably talk about pests, talk about weed control a little bit and what we saw with some of the demonstrations we've done out there. And then Dr. Allie Grote, she's our new beef cattle specialist. She's going to come in and talk about heifer development. I think her goal is to, she wants to set up a heifer development program if there's interest from beef cattle producers, which would be cool because that has a lot to do with, you know, market right now is no one's retaining heifers. They're so high that everybody's sending their heifers to sell them. So we'll talk that. It should be pretty interesting. We'll have a meal, serving food.

Sounds good.

Yeah. And then I'm doing some horticulture classes next week. The next Friday composting class. Dang, I got a quit kicking the table. Composting class, that'll just be like a.

Is that, oh, that's the 13th.

The 13th, Friday the 13th.

We really need a good sound effect for that.

We don't have a good one. Applause. We figured out, we figured out today our little machine has sound effects.

I know, we look forward to using them.

Maybe people be like, that's too cheesy.

This Friday, one of my priorities for this year was personal safety kind of, or personal safety and as a big umbrella of some different things, but I'm going to start working on getting our volunteers offering training in CPR. And Friday's our first class of several. So in this class, I have Extension Get VIT volunteers and some EHC volunteers. And then I'm just going to work through our volunteer groups here in our office and get them trained and And so that's Friday. And then, there's a lot more on here too. EHC events, Extension Get Fit training. You've got seed starting classes. We got, I've got a few classes. Cooking club, archery club, youth leadership, farmstead seminar on March 20th. So a lot of great learning opportunities hitting. for our county right now.

I hope people come. That's one of our big deals. And mine, we kind of do this podcast is try to, you know, get out what we're doing and also throw in some educational stuff as we're, you know, as we're going along.

Yeah, the farmstead, you're going to do fruit and berries.

And if you're interested in any capacity of raising fruit and berries. That'll be, it should be good because I'm going to kind of go through everything I think you should know if you're wanting to have an orchard. And it'll be small fruit and fruit trees is what I'll talk about.

And then we have, who is that that's coming in doing the high tunnels.

Yeah, an intro to high tunnel, Tanya Ernst, Tanya Ernst. She's our high tunnel specialist. She'll come in. If you're interested in extending your growing season, then we can do that with high tunnels. There's possibility that there's funding to get high tunnels if you're interested in using that to, you know, go and say a commercial operation and grow to self fruits and vegetables. She'll talk high tunnels. We got Dr. Kirsten Midkiff coming in. Animal health. She's an animal health specialist. I just, I think I told her animal health. We'll see what she comes up with.

I'm sure she'll have some pressing things. What do you talk about those? I'm going to talk about food preservation.

Food preservation.

That's one of my favorite topics. So that was one of the ones on our eval, along with the fruit and berries and detailed animal health.

And then, and then.

You're going to finish this out with some regenerative agriculture.

I think, I want to get it. There's a push for that. And I think there is coming a push for that. And so I think Stone County folks here, we could be, you know, a lot of the practices that we do regenerative would, but we just got to go, you know, we have the ability to do these regenerative practices, and it's just... You could be a little more thoughtful with it. Yeah, how are we going to be thoughtful about it?

More purposeful.

You know, and how we can, you know, you hear all these terms, regenerative, organic, sustainable. What is that? What do they mean? Organic? It is managed by the USDA. If you want to be organic, there's a whole process you have to go through where you reach out to a certifier and like they'll come to your place and tell you, know, the practices you have to be 3 years of no practices that go against organic or using any products that aren't organic have to have three years before you can start the certification process so if you're that's something you're thinking about that you want to go be organic well it's you.

May need to start.

Now you want to start now and it could be simply be a field that or a place that hasn't had anything done to it you know if it hadn't had any of the restricted the chemicals that go against or don't have organic label and or any products that don't go for, we're trying to use, the goal is use natural type products in organic, but it is certified by the USDA. Sustainable and regenerative, I think they, I think they're kind of go hand in hand, sustainable. We want to be able on our operation do practices that we can continue to do where the inputs, are coming off our own farm. That's what I imagine sustainable. You know, we're not having to purchase a lot of outside inputs. We're able to do it all on farm. And that goes into the regenerative agriculture to where it's not limited to, you know, organic or something. We can use, for instance, commercial fertilizers. we can, we do a soil test in our soils poor and we want to build it up. We can use those commercial fertilizers as a tool to, increase our soil fertility and to transition to using, less inputs. Maybe we use commercial fertilizers, but then here in five years, we're using less fertilizers and we're doing more, you know, we're making our own compost or we're we're managing our grazing to where we're not having to apply as much, using multi-species grazing, using those type tools that and management practices to use less inputs. Essentially, that's the goal that I see. Anything I've read in regenerative agriculture is less outside inputs, building up soil fertility, building up soil health, focusing on those type practices. to conserve our natural resources, use what's available to us, and manage it a little bit better.

So, I just think of it as being more purposeful with, if you may be doing some of these practices, but being more purposeful, maybe adding more.

Yeah, doing, you know, rotational grazing is probably one for like beef cattle and livestock farmers that around here, that's one of our top I guess what we call an industry as far as agriculture, it's we have poultry houses, beef cattle, and forages, and then there's, horticulture. But a lot of our guys got beef and forages. So if we wanted to manage that more regeneratively, we can split our pastures into, you know, our multiple fields. If we've got, say, a 20-acre field, well, to how Dr. John Jennings used to tell people to start managing rotational grazing is shut the gates, essentially. That's how you start. If you separate, you know, what's essentially access to all your farm and you start limiting access, well, you're starting to manage your grazing. If we had a pasture that's 20 acres, we may run a temporary electric fence out there, poly wire out through there. It's pretty easy, relatively inexpensive. You know, there is a cost to get good products. You want good ones that work. But then we can run a temporary line up there and separate, you know, a 20 acre field into 10, two tens. What you giggling at me messing up?

Sorry, I just caught so much flack over the peepers comment that.

Yeah, I know.

I'm after.

Any little tongue touch, you're going to grin at.

Well, I'm bad to get tongue tied.

Yeah, but we separate them into two 10 acre pastures.

I saw a field that they had separated out a section yesterday on my way to a basketball game.

So we increase. our utilization, looking at stocking rates is something that probably a lot of people need to do. We've been dry all winter. Cross your fingers. What did you say?

I said, you were talking about when I was talking about 2012. So in 2012, I remember it was a very dry, warm spring and winter. And I have a photo on my, on Facebook. And it was during the NBA finals at the end of May in 2012. And it's a picture of the county line when you're coming back to Stone County from Van Buren County. And all the grass was dead because it was so dry. And so I just kind of was worried. It just seemed to kind of mimic it to me how it was in 2012. And I just kind of wonder, you know, what are the statistics on a dry spring turning into a summer drought?

So you heard it here first. We're expecting a droughty summer.

I'm the groundhog here. I saw one thing, it's like, is winter over according to the beaver.

All right, we're back. The camera shut off and we kind of, we got on A roll. We were rolling. But I think where we were, we were talking about the drought. Anna had predicted the drought. And I was saying, let's think about that. What if, we started managing our operation to plan for some things? We've had dry falls the past three years at least. So what if instead of hoping we get, a second or a third cutting, what if in the front side, maybe instead of, doing 200 pounds, triple 19, we actually go out and soil test and see what our soil needs and then applying fertilizer, like say if we went from, we're putting out 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre, if we stepped it up to 60 pounds, if it, put the pencil to the paper to see if that value's there, but if we can get a little bit of increased yield in our first hay cutting, that we could store back a little bit. But just being thoughtful to how we, to me, that's what regenerative is. Anna's over here with thinking about worms.

The church giggles. I'm sorry.

She got the, yeah, the church giggles are the worst. Like I got those Sunday. Yeah. We'll come back. That'll be our stories as the church giggles today.

Oh man, I can think of multiple giggles stories.

So One more thing I think I was going to mention that we'd recorded before the camera shut off is multi-species grazing. Why would, as a regenerative practice, why do we want to do that? So the thought process is, you know, we say we're doing a rotation. We're managing our grazing and then we run cattle out there and they graze. Well, they're going to pick up, you know, any parasites that would affect our sheep and goats. Not all of them, but they'll lower the population so we don't have as big of a, would you call that an infestation of worms?

Yeah, our egg count.

Egg count. It'll decrease the egg count.

Tell that fact you said that.

So how these worms, if we also being deliberate in our management practices, what I've heard from some of our specialists is those worms early in the morning, will climb up that grass leaf in the dew. So if you have a dew on the ground, the worms are up there close. And so you got your livestock going through grazing. Those worms are right there on the tip of that grass. They're going to get ingested. So one practice we can do is delaying, you know, wait till the grass dries off. Don't allow them access to the pasture till after the morning dew's off. But then back to the rotational, or the multi-species grazing, after we graze cattle, we go in and we graze the sheep. And, cattle, they're gonna be pooping out their worms that they have. That's how they kind of reproduce. They get eaten, they get in there, laid their eggs in the body, and then those worms hatch, and then they get deposited, or more eggs get deposited in the manure, and then they hatch. That's the life cycle.

But got worms.

As we, send the cattle off, their worms are there, come in. They've lowered the population of worms for the sheep. Well, the sheep come in and they'll eat and lower the population of the worms that affect cattle. And then we could even, after that, after the cattle and the sheep have spread their manure, we could send our chickens across there to spread the manure a little bit more. We'll get more, spread of the nutrients than certain areas. And doing managed rotational grazing will make them access more of the field. So we're getting more of that nutrient spread throughout the field. We can increase utilization where 35% at continuous. So yeah, if we're doing like a continuous grazing, we're just allowing them full access They'll utilize about 35% because they're going to trump and poop and pee and...

Yeah, they don't care when they do those things.

Or that it's not what they prefer. You know, that fescue, that tall fescue this time of year has got a real... like edge tooth. It's like you got a sawtooth edge. So you can imagine they're grazing that and they'd be like, I don't like that. It hurts to me. That hurts. I'm not going to eat that. But we can say, no, we're going to stick you here on this pasture that's smaller. And then they're like, oh, I got to eat. I got to eat. I'm going to eat first. And so they'll utilize more of it. And we can get that utilization up to 75%. So. Wow. That's A lot. listen to our podcast and we give good tips of how you can be better at agriculture and.

Giggle about worms.

Giggle about worms. I kind of, that's all I'm going to. That's all I want to talk about today as far as education.

I think I'll go home now.

I think I'll go home now. I'm tired.

Oh, me. Well, is it my turn? Sure. So this kind of, this does affect both of us. And one question we get here at the office, and it's always a tough one, is what about the youth of our county? Like, what are we going to do? What are they going to do? And I seriously have a gnat going after me. It's that time of year. And so that's a question that, and you'll see it on our, on social media for our county. And there's not enough stuff for our youth, they need more activities, they need a bowling alley, they need a this and that. And it's really interesting to me because growing up in this community, I felt like I had plenty to do. But I know not everybody has the same resources that I had necessarily, or they don't realize what resources are available for them. And I was in 4-H, and I had 4-H very available to me. And so what I feel like is everyone's trying to solve this broad social issue. Wouldn't you say?

Yeah.

Like they're bringing in articles that talk about these different statistics and not a single one of them has a clue of what really to do. Like they, in my opinion, they're trying to solve this huge issue.

They're asking us what we're going to do and no one, no one's sure what approach to take.

Or I told what I think is a great solution. And they're just like, because I think sometimes people want to throw money at it. Or, and I've heard one of our 4-H parents say that, throw money at it.

But what we need to throw- I hope that solves it.

Yeah. And we could build things and we could do this and that, but are they really long-term other than just an activity? What are they doing for that individual? What are you learning? What are you, what skills are you gaining? And I really, the solution's really simple to me, is it's time. Time. So can you give your time and quit picking such a broad issue, pick something specific. So like, for instance, I'm worried that there's not going to be enough trades. So what can I do as an individual or what skills do I possess that would benefit the youth of our county.

If we could get people to volunteer some of their time, a couple hours a month or one hour a month and use your knowledge and the skills you have, we have the ability to set up a club or set up some sort of educational event. If you'll come in, you know, we can reach some youth.

And one thing is we're not going to any one person cannot meet the unique needs of all the youth in our county. And I was just thinking of all the opportunities for 4-H with project clubs or community clubs. And if say you wanted a drama club, 4-H, that could be a club for you. If you're into 3D printing or if you love horses or if you're worried about workforce development and want resumes, speaking skills, interview, parliamentary procedure. If you want to learn more about carpentry, we have many people skilled in the trades that could spend their time. What if science interests you? What if you love photography? I thought a photography club would be a great club. And really, you just have to commit one day a month. And you could pick one of those things. Like you could have a photography club, or if you're in a little community and say, I live 30 minutes from Mountain View, and I don't want to always drive to Mountain View for everything. Or like Fox has a community club, so they pull, they ask their kids, what are some interests for you? And they'll have different activities that meet the different interests of that group. And that's something very easy for anybody to start at any age. You don't have to be young. To be a leader, you don't have to have a child. To be a leader, you have to have two people to have a club that aren't related. You have to have at least six kids. We can get the kids. And that's one thing I worry about with clubs starting. You got to give us some time. You got to be consistent meeting. You got to let us know so we can communicate with our group. We have 117 enrolled for the year already.

Yeah.

I'm sure if you've got a an interest that they, and we love to ask our kids what they like, because we know what we like, but we really try to seek the kids out and then add some things that they may not have thought about into our education.

Yeah, so if you listen to the podcast and you're like, I want to help the youth, and you'd get to work with us and we're fun.

Yeah, we're a great, great time.

Yeah.

And we're happy to help you.

We're happy to help you.

We each have, I have two clubs and Tyler has a club and And we meet with our educational groups regularly throughout the year, our practices. And so we're kind of tapped out on that. But I just thought if we had just a few more leaders who could volunteer.

Just volunteer some time to, help the youth. That's where, that's really where it starts is, you know, we need some of adults that are willing to volunteer to come in. You do have to be able to pass a background check.

And they also check the child maltreatment registry, which I like because not everybody has been convicted of a crime per se. But if there's been some serious things come up for you, then you're going to be seen on the child maltreatment registry. And then all the finances are ran through our office. So there's no worries there. You know, it's a positive thing. You know, some have viewed it in the past is a big change, but I think everybody now is used to it.

Yeah, because it's less paperwork on you.

Yeah, it's you're not having to worry about reporting that account.

Yeah, we're used to you did like you have to come in and like do all these reports and now we manage it for you.

Now we manage it for you as long as your spending meets a few parameters and which are very.

The club voted on to use the money that way.

And they're fair and they match what our mission is for 4-H. And there's a lot of wonderful, fun things that you can do. And even if you don't want to have money, if you don't want to deal with money at all, don't do money.

Yeah, you don't have to do money. It's free to join 4-H. You know, even like, you know, you get a group of Kids come in and their parents are there and say you wanted to do snacks. I've heard clubs that, all right, this is your month to do snacks.

Yeah, so you know it doesn't have, I think a lot of us think of a big thing. We have to do a big event, we have to do a big club, we have to do this. If you've got six kids who are very interested in whatever it is that you have talents in, and every one of us has a talent in some area or many areas that we can show the youth of our county and give them opportunities.

Yeah, we're trying to teach them life skills and develop them so when they go out into the big world that they're prepared and they have some skills to manage.

Yeah. And it's fun because some of these things can be hobbies and then some of these things may turn into a career for some of our youth.

And you can say, look what I did. Look at, you see that kid over there who's doing well? He was in my 4-H club or she was in my 4-H club.

Well, and each of these members can be members of many clubs. And then we have all these county events that we have and district and state events. And they can do all of those things. And then they can go to camps at the 4-H center if they want. And then we've had in the past Several years ago, we have some 4-H parents now that got to go to Washington. So there's a lot of opportunities here for the youth in our rural communities, in our county. They can stay at the county level or they can go beyond. And it just hurts me to hear that there's not enough to do when we've got so many activities going on right now.

Yeah, like 4-H, that's an activity, but there's in just our town, like the sports, like that. I know there's more sports than when I was a kid.

Absolutely, yeah. Whitney's playing soccer and we didn't have, that wasn't an option. That hadn't been a great option for me as a child, highly energetic, run me down.

Yeah, and so we mentioned like you have an interest that could go on to the kids like art. One of our interests that we've gotten into is like wildlife. I like to hunt and fish and.

So do I. And.

One thing that we do with the kids, and kids are really interested in it, is WEP, Wildlife Habitat Evaluation Program. We've got some skulls laid out here on the table and pelts here, but in this contest, that's what kids have to do. There's a different region, there's regions across the United States, and so each region It could be the topic that year. This year we're the eastern deciduous region, so kids have to learn about a list of animals from this eastern deciduous region, but on the urban and.

Wetland.

There's also urban and wetland part to it as far as identification. So they probably have like a list of like 60, 70 critters that they've got a total that they've got to be able to either identify it by the pelt, the skull, if it's bird, the nest, or possibly the sound it makes, or the egg, or the track, or the ****. And then they also have to, for the eastern deciduous, know the habitat management practices, the types of foods that each of those animals eat, the best habitat or habitat practices that we could use to increase or manage habitat so those critters are attracted to it. And so we do this when we go through it with them, think about the life skills they're learning. They're learning about, yeah, how to identify skulls and pelts and animals, but just the habitat management aspect to it?

Yeah, understanding how to manage your property for different species.

Yeah, I want to attract wild turkeys from learning in 4-H. This is how I know what turkeys like. This is the type of habitat they like. And so I'm going to increase and do these certain management practices on my property so that I can increase turkeys.

Or if you've got to decrease some populations to increase other populations, it's a great. And we've been going over satellite images. I mean, there's a lot to the contest, but we have so many kids that don't go to the contest. They're just here to learn about wildlife. And I've learned A lot.

Shameless brag, shameless plug. We are the reigning, reigning senior state champions. And Junior State Champions 2025 web. So we are pretty good at it. And like here's the type of stuff you learn. We've got two skulls laid out here. So I'll pick one up, you pick the other one up. I don't know if I can see it, but it says, hello, do you know what type of animal that I am? And what we've got here is 2 different fox skulls, but two different species of fox. We've got a gray fox and a red fox skull. The one on the left is a red fox. The one that I'm holding on the right is a gray fox. And how you can tell if you can see this crest on top of their skull, a gray fox has a U-shaped skull. And a red fox has a Y or V-shaped crest. And so just learning those little tips of what to look for on a skull so we can, even get down to, oh, this isn't just a fox squirrel or a fox skull. This is a... gray fox skull, or there's a red fox skull, or we even show them how to tell the difference in a gray squirrel and a fox squirrel skull. Not going to give that tip away, but you'll have to come to the class. But we learn about those type of things.

And I've learned A lot. I was able to identify some **** of what was after my chickens. But because of WEP and knowing it was a bobcat, the way their poops in A twist.

Yeah.

They don't bury it, come to find out. But hate to give away all our tips, but there's two.

Looking at poop, is it a plop? Is it pellets? Is it, you know, is it a-?

What'd you call it a plop or a pile or a- I.

Think they're called plops. Plops. No, the piles is what we get.

You remember.

I got the piles and the hot snakes.

Yeah, one of my great aunts would say she had the piles. I was like, what? What's that mean?

Yeah, plop is in wet. Bears make plops.

Not the hot steaks.

All right, it is that time in the podcast where we'll be silly. Tell the story. We'll be silly. This is, I hope, I hope the education. Y'all gonna have to, if you listen, you're gonna have to start commenting on stuff and letting us know.

Yeah, we've had a listener before ask us to talk about a certain topic, and we're happy to do that. So we were talking about me having the church giggles if it made it from the edit. So Sunday, we were at church, and my father-in-law wanted us to sing a new song, and it wasn't going very well. And he had, I think we just went through one verse and he's like, let's go to the 4th verse. And Brandon's uncle goes, amen. Yeah.

And they got it on the day.

Yeah, they got it on our. They record it.

Yeah, they record it. Put it out on Facebook and you can hear it. And he's like, 4th verse.

Amen. And I got the giggles.

The only time I can remember getting church giggles is when like somebody had passed gas or fart or something. Yeah, like you remembered of the prayer circle.

Yes.

We were all, I forget what we were praying about. We all were, yeah, we're all at the walls. Everybody's like on the wall of the church and we're all holding hands. And I wasn't standing close, but I heard the giggles. I don't think I was close enough to hear the original. But we're up there praying, everybody's holding hands and all of a sudden people, they just kind of bust out and start giggling during the prayer. So what happened?

We had this little girl and she had colic really bad. And one of the older men had her and she let out the biggest dude I've ever heard from a baby. And I mean, half of the church could hear it. And so then we all got the giggles. And I mean, I think someone finally just busted out.

I think Rebecca. I think she's the one that.

Well, it was her grandpa that had the baby.

She's the one that laughed real hard.

Well, after one of them started laughing, there was no way I was keeping it in because I'm easy to laugh anyway.

Yeah.

And I just couldn't stop. And then Braden couldn't stop.

The church giggles are the best because it's like you cannot stop laughing.

And they come in a bad time.

Yeah, always at a bad time.

Yeah, and someone thinks you're laughing about something that you're not actually laughing about, something else. Yeah.

It's more than likely somebody farted and that's what's happening back there.

Oh, we should tell the story about your mom and Magnolia. Oh, yeah.

So, I wasn't there, so you'll have to tell it.

Well, I was close enough. I've heard the story told a couple times, but So Tori's mom had, Bonetta had.

And Tyler's mom.

Excuse me, your mom, well, it was her kids, so that's what I was thinking of. Anyway, Bonetta Caston had Magnolia and Clem, Clemmy, and they were on the next back row, kind of like across from where we were. And I guess during Bonetta was holding climbing. I guess during prayer, Magnolia got her phone and wasn't supposed to.

Yeah.

And James said it's like, she was like a wizard, like an IT specialist running through that phone to get to that app. And she pulled up an app and it very loudly during prayer goes, there's a snake in the toilet. And she grabbed her up. And she accidentally, and he said, what, when she grabbed her, she's like, no. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. And then she accidentally might have knocked her. She was fighting her, taking her outside, and I think she might have knocked her noggin on the corner of the pew.

Oh, poor Magnomie.

But we had the giggles because we heard, an app. I didn't know it said about a toilet, but it was a very loud.

I would have died laughing.

I got tickled. Oh, man.

So funny story that I've got that I guess I'll tell it. I don't know if they actually listen, but We'll find out. Maybe they'll think it's funny. But so.

If they knew how picky you were.

Yeah, I guess it would be funny if you knew how picky it was. So Apple butter. I've never in my life tried apple butter. Like I've made it nearly 40 years without having to try it. I don't know what it's supposed to taste like and I don't, I've never asked for it because I had no desire to try it. But Anna, y'all made, you did a class.

Yes, I had several.

I've never tried apple butter. Don't know what it's supposed to taste like. One of the guys that attended the class, he had brought his, this was, and this happened just recently. Like he, Anna and Madison were out and I was in here, door opens and here, I immediately hear him and know who it is and go out there and he's like, I brought some apple butter, let's try it. And I was like, oh no, please no.

Yeah.

But so I was like, he's like, Okay, I was like, all right, let's try it. So we go into our little conference room and like I'm searching for like spoons because I think, he's just gonna, I'm just give me a little dip on a spoon and I'll taste it and say, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Well, he goes, do we have, do you have like any container, like a bowl? And I was like, well, and I grabbed a little, like a little small paper plate and handed it to him. He scoops out a big old plop.

Speaking of plops.

Speaking of plops, like plops it down. And so I'm like, oh man. And he's like, we'll try some. So I try it and it's, I don't know what it's supposed to taste like. It tasted kind of vinegary.

Well, when he took the class, he didn't add all the sugar you're supposed to. He denied it, but it was confirmed by all of their members. So it's not supposed to be vinegary.

Well, it was. So I'm just kind of like, it's good. And I'd tried it and it was fine. Like, I mean, I could see where you could eat it on something maybe. But then he was like, well, have some more, have as much as you like. And I'm like thinking I've had as much as I like, you know, I'm good. But he's like, here, and he's eating it all. And he's like, it's good. I like get some and get a big bite because I'm like, he's not going to quit until I eat all this. And so I like do big scoops. Well, I put it in my mouth and it's like all the texture and all the, and the taste and all hits me. And I'm just kind of like, try not to, try not to gag. I'm easy gagger already, but it's like, I just swallowed it down and I just toughed it out and like, oh yeah, it's good.

You barely survived.

It was fine. It's just, I wasn't expecting to eat a bunch of it. It's like.

Yeah, not.

It's like an apple sauce portion.

Not, yeah, apple butter is not an applesauce portion. Normally it's on toast or biscuit.

Yeah, that's what I thought would be. You'd put it on something, but no, we had it just plain.

Lots of it.

Yeah, so pretty much if you're like, that ain't that bad, think about having to do that with like a spoonful of mayonnaise. Yeah, plop of mayonnaise. That's, well, but that's what happened to me. Interesting, fun stuff.

The life of an agent.

Yeah. I mean, if you bring stuff in, I'll try it.

I do like when we get given veggies and things like that. That's been nice.

Yeah. But I was the only one that was fortunate enough to get to try it.

Yep. Lucky you.

That's my funny story that's happened recently. I hope it was funny and not offensive. I've never tried apple butter and that was my first try.

And you barely made it.

Barely made it. Never. I don't want to try any real stuff neither.

You're good.

I'm good. I'm not a. I'll try stuff, but I mean.

You're piggy, but not piggy all at the same time.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. Hope it was educational. Listen to us. Share with your buddies. Tell them.

Yeah, let us. Let them know about us.

Yeah. We'll do better if we're not doing good. You think?

Way to undersell.

Undersell, over deliver. That's one of my motto. Yeah.

That sounds bad.

It may be funny. It may not. It may not be a thing. Listen anyway.

I feel like we overly explained it.

All right. I don't know a lot. Good luck to whoever has to edit this.

That's all, folks.

da da da. Bye.