Hello again! Sienna Mahaffy here, checking back in after a busy, fun filled summer with Coos County Extension!
The county fair finished up a couple of weeks ago and was a huge success! My official project was once again organizing the annual Milk Drinking Contest for our 4-H members. I contacted sponsors to supply milk and prizes (huge thanks to Organic Valley and the Oregon Dairy Council) and lined up local dairy farmers to serve as line judges, pour milk and race against the winning team. While everything worked out in the end, I made the mistake of telling my dairy farmer volunteers to arrive at the same time the contest was starting instead of a few minutes early. This left me scrambling to set up with fewer people than I initially planned for, but I learned a valuable lesson in managing and communicating with volunteers. In the end, the audience and kids had tons of fun, so I considered this year’s contest a success!
At the fair, I also took a larger role in assisting with the livestock judging contest and the operation of the Purple Cow, the Coos County 4-H’s ice cream and milkshake stand and one of our biggest fundraisers. Both endeavors rely heavily on volunteers and sometimes feel like barely organized chaos, but I have enjoyed the challenge of helping my supervisor, Elissa, run these events smoothly!
Last week, I finished my work in the cranberry bogs of Coos and Curry Counties by taking the last moth counts and removing the traps. Now Cassie, the ag agent, will analyze the data to continue making improvements in treatment protocols to help cranberry farmers! This part of my internship taught me a lot about aspects of Extension beyond 4-H. I learned just how tedious research can be; it requires repetition and precision, as insufficient or inaccurate data will cause inadequate results. However, I also realized how rewarding it is to work directly with farmers. They would stop me in the bogs with questions about treatment recommendations and I would forward these to Cassie, as I was not qualified to answer them: and other times just to chat. I learned so much from these small conversations about cranberries and the communities in the southern end of Coos County that I rarely visited growing up.
This will likely be my last year as an Extension intern in Oregon, but I have loved my experience and recommend it to lots of my fellow students. I have enjoyed learning about the numerous aspects of Extension and seeing the impact it has on the communities it serves.
