4-H FOR LIFE

PALMER — Ah, the frenzied preparations for the Alaska State Fair — primping that pepper, pressing that quilt and picking those lice.

Dozens of local 4-H and FFA students spent the days leading up to yesterday’s start of the Alaska State Fair putting the finishing touches on projects that may have been a year in the making.

Whether it is the elaborate educational displays, meticulous handcrafts, perfect baked goods or a 1,300-pound steer, a year’s worth of work and learning culminates during those 12 days in Palmer.

The 4-H Building at the fairgrounds is full of a dizzying variety of entries from 4-H kids around Alaska, according to Lee Hecimovich, Mat-Su/Copper River 4-H and youth development agent.

“It’s almost like Christmas,” Hecimovich said. “Every year it’s a litle different. You never know what will show up.”

This year the bounty includes homemade snowshoes, complex dioramas, fly tying, foods and woodworking, as well as photography, food, quilts, computer science projects, arts and crafts and more.

For those who raise livestock, like Quillan Jacobson, 15, and Lydia Shumaker, 17, both of Palmer, that includes combing lice from their animals.

A few days before the fair opened, Palmer High freshman Jacobson was in the kitchen whipping up a batch of cookies. It’s an unusual recipe with candy bars as an ingredient. Jacobson’s primary method of picking his fair entries, he said, is finding something that sounds good to him that looks good in the cookbook.

“If I think it will taste good, it’s something other people might try,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson will enter in several food categories in both the 4-H competition and in open class as a junior. His favorite entries: his marble-swirl yeast bread and his peanut butter secret cookies.

He’s been cooking in 4-H for seven years. He had little choice but learn, according to his mother, Dorothy, a PE teacher at Palmer Junior/Middle School.

“I have three boys,” she said. “This was one of the criteria. You had to learn to cook before you graduate.” Her older sons learned to cook and graduated: one is in the Navy, the other in college.

While Quillan Jacobson enjoys the kitchen, he’s hardly a one-dimensional member of the Rimrock Riders, the 4-H group started by Dorothy and her sister, Cathy Glaser, when they moved their families to Alaska from Wyoming.

They did Cub Scouts for a while, and it was fine, she said, but she wanted her sons involved in the kind of 4-H experience she and her sister enjoyed.

“I have always felt the skills and responsibilities they learned were important,” Dorothy said. “4-H met our interest and diversity better.”

The boys have raised hogs, young beef calves and market steers, as well as turkeys and chickens.

This year, Quillan will take his two steers, Shadow and Amorphous, into the sawdust-covered ring in the huge livestock barn. He’ll also compete in showmanship with Miss America.

This lovely lady won’t be wearing a banner, but does have a comb. She’s a 4-year-old Americana chicken Jacobson has been showing since she was young. While she is too old to compete for her fine figure, she is an excellent posing chicken.

Jacobson will show the hen with a 360-degree explanation of her fine points, including ones she must be held upside down to see. It’s a process that both Jacobson and Miss America take in stride, even if he winces slightly at her name.

“That was four years ago,” he says, a bit sheepishly.

Jacobson, who also plays basketball and runs track, is such a hand at showing birds, he helps train the younger members of Rimrock to do it as well.

And it’s his favorite 4-H project at the fair.

“I like the chicken,” he said. “They’re easy to show. They work with you.

“This one’s smart,” he said of his prize bird. “The rest of them aren’t too bright.”

Miss America is much more portable than his two steers, though they, too, respond to Jacobson’s deft handling. He will show one of them in the showmanship ring, as well as having them both judged on the hoof.

They will be among the animals at the 4-H Junior Market Livestock Auction at noon on Saturday, Sept. 4.

The auction is the final payoff for the hard work, not only monetarily for the students, but in terms of seeing what they accomplished in the months with their animals.

Lydia Shumaker has been bringing animals to the fair for a dozen years. She started young — 6 — when her oldest brother joined 4-H. She and her other brother, then 7, raised game birds that first year.

From there, she worked her way up from turkeys to sheep to hogs.

Her least favorite? Sheep.

“Those sheep are hard,” Shumaker said. “You work with them all year long and you get to the fair and they’re jumpy.”

It takes at least three hours to clean, shear and wash them for the show ring.

“That’s probably why I really did not like sheep,” she admitted.

When her dad, Bob Shumaker, let her do her first hog, there was no turning back.

“It was awesome,” she said. “It was simple.”

This year, Schumaker, who graduated in the spring from Anchorage’s Highland Tech High, will take eight cows to the fair, including four dairy cows that are part of demonstrations she conducts with her father.

“I will milk the cow; dad will talk,” she explained.

Bob Shumaker, a purchasing agent for the Mat-Su Borough School District, said 4-H has been a wonderful program for his family.

“It’s been a great for them to learn to work with other people and how to work with animals, and to learn responsibilty,” he said. “4-H is an awesome program.”

Interest in livestock is prompting Shumaker to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage this fall on her first step to becoming a large-animal veterinarian. Shumaker said her experiences in 4-H and FFA not only have given her funds to help start her college career, they’ve given her the skill set to be successful.

“It teaches you responsibilty,” Shumaker said, “and that when things need to be done, they need to be done. No one is going to do it for you.”

And it is competition, camraderie and opportunity.

“It’s one of the most fun things a kid can do that’s safe,” she said.

This is her last year in the youth competitions. Will she miss it?

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Very much.

“On the other hand, I won’t have to get up at 6 a.m. to feed.”