Holiday Service Drive for Arbor House

We're holding a holiday drive for the Arbor House. We' d like for everyone to bring an item or two from the list below. Arbor House is a home for single moms (I believe they have six moms plus kids/babies right now) and we'll be delivering the items before Christmas. If anyone would like to contribute to a couple of grocery gift cards, please let me know and I'll go buy some or bring gift cards with you.

Wish List

• Household Paper Products: trash bags, paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, napkins, etc. Household Cleaning Supplies: disinfectant spray, Windex, dish soap, etc.
• Infant Wipes & Diapers (all sizes needed)
• Infant OTC Tylenol, saline, diaper cream, etc
• H E Laundry Soap
• Storage Tubs with Lids
• Carpet Vacuum
• Gift Cards (Albertsons, Publix, Walmart, Target)
• Fabric & batting

End-of-Year Holiday Party

Please join us next Tuesday, December 9, at Mr. Jesse's for a holiday dinner. We'll meet at 5:30. We'd like for everyone to bring a side dish or dessert. I haven't decided what to do for a meat dish yet, so if anyone would like to help, just let me know! If you need directions, just let me know. Here are sign up areas that I'm thinking of:

Meat:
Side Dish (at least 2):
Dessert:
Drinks:
Paper Goods:

Tuesday's Meeting

First meeting of the 4-H year will be this Tuesday. Several important things we will be doing at this meeting:

Elections - we will be electing president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, recreation coordinator, and snack coordinator. Everyone is invited to participate in these leadership activities.

Registration - Florida 4-H has gone to an on-line registration system. We will be registering during the meeting on Ms. Emily's laptops. Please bring your doctor's info and insurance info with you. It will be needed to fill out the emergency and health sections of the forms.

Projects & Service Ideas - we will be discussing projects we will be doing throughout the year. We will also be brainstorming service ideas for our club.

Don't forget to bring a friend or two!

New Club Web Page

We've got a new Web page for our club! It has several cool features - an interactive calendar, a place to put our agendas and club info, and project stuff. Check it out at http://starsandstripes4h.weebly.com/.

If you have any ideas to add to it, just let Ms. Emily know.

Important Fall Dates

September 21, 2008 - Pre State Fair Seminar-Tampa
October 11, 2008-4-H Roundup 9am to 12
October 4, 2008-Fat Steer Weigh in-8am to 10 am @ Santa Fe High School
October 4, 2008-Market Goat Tag in-8am to 10 am@ Santa Fe High School
October 17-26, 2008-Alachua county Fair
December 6, 2008-Swine Tag in-10am to 12 @ Santa Fe High School
December 6, 2008-Feeder Steer Weigh In-10am to 12 @ Santa Fe High School

First Meeting of the Fall

Tuesday, September 19 from 5:30 to 7 pm!

We'll talk about projects for this year, elect officers, and introduce new members.

See you then and don't forget to bring a friend!

Summer Plans

Hi everyone,

Well, it seems the summer has snuck up on us! I hope everyone's end of the school year went well. We had a blast at our end-of-year lake party (if you weren't able to make it - contact me, I have some stuff for you more than likely).

Summer Plans
I wanted to see what people wanted to do over the summer with 4-H. I was thinking of doing 2-3 field trips possibly related to butterfly gardening. We'll start meeting regularly again in September, but we'll probably have a parents meeting in late August to kick off the 4-H year.

Library Butterfly Garden
We're also going to be working on collecting plants for our Tower Road library garden and we'll have at least one work/service day to install the plants. I'm working with the library to make sure we don't miss anything. I've attached the plant list. I work with a landscape designer and she came up with a list of plants and a design that would work for our library garden.

Parent Volunteer Opportunities
I have some specific parent volunteer opportunities that I could really use some help with. Please let me know if you're interested. We really need some help to make this coming year awesome!

Field Trip Organizer - contact trip site, relay information to club, set times and dates
--Field Trip #1 Organizer - Great Butterfly House in Earleton - possible trip dates end of June or early July
--Field Trip #2 Organizer - Butterfly Rainforest - possible trip dates in late July or early August
--Field Trip #3 Organizer - Payne's Prairie - sometime this fall

Butterfly Garden Helpers
--Library Plant Collector - take the lead on collecting the plants for the garden either by contacting nurseries or assigning plants/nurseries to families
--Arbor Builders - we've got a couple of arbors in the garden plan and we'll need some handy people to help show the kids how to build them - they can be out of lumber, bamboo, or a variety of other materials

Fall Helpers
--Fall Snack Coordinator - I'd like to get a parent to coordinate snacks for the fall
--Cloverbud Helper - we're going to have a LOT of Cloverbuds this upcoming year (5-7 year olds) and some tag alongs (younger than 5). I really need some help with planning activities and collecting meeting items for them.
--Livestock Judging Coach - last spring, we had some interest from our older members in forming a livestock judging team. If they're still interested, we'll need to get a couple of coaches to help out with training them.
--Project Leaders - help with a specific project activity (ex. vegetable gardening), helping kids carry out activities, identifying guest speakers - if you're interested in a specific project area, let me know and I can tell you more about it. This past year, we mainly focused on gardening and swine. We're willing to expand that if we have the project leaders to help with it. Project leaders can also have sub-meetings to really get into content with interested members. For example, some of the members have been interested in crocheting - we might meet every couple months just with the crocheters to go over new techniques and projects.

We just finished a great year and we're really looking forward to the upcoming year. Parents - please let me know if you're interested in serving as a volunteer. Volunteers are the heart of 4-H and the program wouldn't happen without them. We really want to make this coming year a great year for everyone, but we'll need your help to do that. If you'd like to talk more about what the different volunteer positions, call me and I can give you more info.

Butterfly Garden Sketch

I went out to the library today to look at our site. It looks great! Here is the outline of our location. We're going to have a design competition with our members, so print this off and fill it in with the plants on our plant list for the garden. I look forward to seeing them!

We're going to need help!

Stars & Stripes is getting ready to put in a butterfly garden at the Tower Road library. We hope to attract Zebra long wings, black swallowtails, monarchs, sulfurs, gulf fritillary, Easter Tiger swallowtail, and Giant swallowtail.

We're going to need to work on getting some donations. If you'd like to help with collecting donations, let me know. I can use all the help I can get.

Here's a list of materials:
--landscape timbers for edging
--soaker hoses or drip irrigation
--mulch
--lumber to build an arbor

We also are working on getting a bunch of plants donated. If you have any of these in your yard or know someone that might be able to donate plants, please let us know.

Nectar Plants
--Fire bush
--Milkweed
--Gaillardia
--Coreopsis
--Mist Flower
--Porterweed
--Tropical Sage
--Snow Square Stem
--Fire Spike
--Pentas
--Mexican Sunflowers
--Zinnias

Host Plants
--Passion vine
--Parsely
--Milkweed
--Cassia
--Wild Cherry Tree
--Wild Lime or Citrus Tree

I got some free zinnias already although we could probably use some more. I also have coreopsis seed and have dug up some passion flower from my yard. The passion flower is not in the best of shape, so it may not make it.

I'm going to the library this week to take pictures of our site. I'll send out measurements and then any interested members can do a garden design. The club will vote on which design we like and that will be the one that goes into the library!

Butterfly Gardening!

Ms. Wendy Wilbur, our Alachua County horticulture agent, was the guest speaker at our last meeting. She's going to help us with our butterfly garden at the Tower Road library.

Designing our garden.






Butterflies have tongues that they drink with. Here are 4-Hers are butterflies and flowers.

Last meeting of the 2007-2008 year!

Dear parents,

Our last 4-H meeting of the year is this Thursday! But, we still have a few more activities after that. We'll be meeting at the Eubanks' house at 5:30. Here's what we're planning on talking/doing on Thursday.

We'll have a recap of the youth fair and the great job our members did at it. We'll talk about possible fair projects for next year.

Wendy Wilbur, Alachua County horticulture agent, will be talking to the club about community gardens. She's going to help us organize our long-term service project - a butterfly garden at Tower Road library! We haven't scheduled a date for putting the garden in yet, but it will most likely be a Saturday afternoon in May.

We'll also be talking about officer positions for next year and answer any questions the members might have.

We'll also be having an end-of-year party at the end of May, so we'll be talking more about that. We'll be holding officer elections then, so encourage your kids to be thinking about what office they want to hold.

And, we'll be having a parents' meeting May 15 to discuss what activities we want to do over the summer and what we'd like to do next year.

Last meeting, the kids were asked to identify a Floridian butterfly, their host plant, and their larval plant. Remind your kids to look for those. Here's a good resource for kids on butterflies - http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu:8080/wings/.

Please let me know if you can come and remember to bring your t-shirt money if you'd like a t-shirt!
Thanks.
Emily

Great job, girls!

Joy and Tera did a great job at the fair this weekend! Both girls worked very hard on their swine projects and both pigs weighed in at 265 pounds. They were in the class together. Tera's pig took 2nd and Joy's pig took 3rd. And, they were both called back for showmanship! We're very proud of the work and dedication they put into their projects this year. Great job!

Hi everyone,

Well, we're entering the busy time of year - fair season! I've got some updates and date changes to provide you for the next couple of meetings. Sorry for the long email; I've been saving up on stuff to send you.

Date Changes
Lorall and I are taking a class on Tuesday nights, so we're going to change the last few meetings to Thursday night. Here's the rundown:

March meeting - will now be March 20 at the Crows house
April meeting - cancelling the meeting for April 8 (spring break week) and only having a 4-Her (8 and up) meeting on April 17th.

Fair Projects
Fair projects are due March 15 at the 4-H office. Non-livestock entry rules can be found here . Each project needs to have it's own recordbook (also available on the 4-H website). The Cloverbuds (5-7) only need to fill out one project summary for all of their projects.

We're going to have a fair project workday at my house March 8 from 1 to 4 pm for anyone who needs help with projects, recordbooks or entry forms. Please take a look at the entry book. There are a lot of fun contests and activities happening - rocket launches, bicycle rodeos, cookie bake-offs, bbq contest, etc.

Fair Helping
Our club has been asked to help with several things at the fair. We've been asked to man the county 4-H booth on Saturday, March 29, from 12-3:30 pm. I need 1 adult and 2 members to volunteer to do this. Please let me know if you're available.

Each club is also asked to help with set up or take down of the exhibit building. We'll be helping with take down on April 1 from noon to 4 pm. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Service Project
Wendy Wilbur, the Alachua County horticulture agent, is going to be teaching us about community gardening. We've been asked to help put in a butterfly garden at Tower Road library. Wendy will be coming April 17 to talk with the older kids about the logistics of the project. This will be a long-term project for us and will be considered our club service activity for several years. Wendy will help us with the design of the garden and show us some installation techniquest. The garden won't be very big. We'll need to get plants donated, have a workday to get them planted, and then continue with maintenance (mainly weeding) throughout the year. We're planning on the workday being Saturday, May 3. Please let me know if this would work for you and if morning or afternoon would be better. If we can get most of our members there, we should be done with the planting in a very short period.

Also, don't forget to be collecting change in your cow banks for the Heifer International project.

County Activities
County Events Day has moved to April 19. This is an opportunity for members to give presentations, posters, etc. on their projects. It's a great leadership skill building activity.

Junior Congress is coming up on May 9 and 10. Congress is an overnight camp where youth have fun, learn new skills, make new friends, and get an idea of what Senior Congress is like. Several Senior-level 4-H youth have signed up to teach classes at Jr. Congress. If you are also interested in teaching or need more information, contact the Extension Office at (352)-955-2402 . The registration deadline for Jr. Congress is May 2, 2008.

End-of-Year Party
We'd like to do an end-of-year party to celebrate what a great 4-H year it's been! Anyone have any suggestions on where it should be held? My family has a lakehouse in Melrose which we could go to for the day and swim and bbq, but it is 20 miles east of Gainesvillle. What do you think of this? Any other ideas?

Parents' Meeting
We'd like to do a parents' meeting in May to discuss next year's schedule, where we could use some help, field trips, summer camp, and ideas for more summer activities. How does Thursday, May 15 sound?

T-shirts
Would anyone be interested in doing customized Stars & Stripes 4-H t-shirts? See examples. I think the kids would love it, but I want to know if there's interest before pursuing this. It would be great for field trips, fair, etc. County Council is also offering t-shirts for $10 as a county fundraiser.

I know this seems like a lot, but it's been a great year and we still have so much more to do! Please consider participating in the fair this year. If you have any questions, give me a call.
Emily

Next Meeting Feb. 12

8 and up - next meeting is Feb. 12 at the Crows house. Please bring your record books or projects that you're working on. We'll work on getting them ready for the fair. Parents - be ready to help!