Family Fun at Fall Harvest Festival

Bringing Knowledge to Life! / Partner Report /
EatonCounty
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Charlotte, Michigan48813-1047
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Family fun at Fall Harvest Festival

Eaton County 4-H’ers and their families enjoyed some old fashioned family fun at the first Eaton County 4-H Fall Harvest Festival. The Eaton County 4-H Council hosted the event.

The event consisted of old fashioned carnival games and activities including bobbin’ for apples, donut-eating contests, face painting, pin the nose on the pumpkin, a spooky attic and a horse drawn wagon ride. Following all the fun and games there was Halloween Hoe Down.

Traditional fall snacks were also offered including caramel apples, apple cider, popcorn and more donuts. The Country Mill, a local orchard, donated all of the apples.

The event was attended by more than 100 people of all ages ranging from preschoolers to great-grandmothers.

Volunteers of all ages planned and organized the event. The youth volunteers decorated for the event, picked the apples, and then staffed the booths so that other kids could have a fun filled night.

The giving didn’t end when the booths closed. It continued even after the music started and the boots started scooting. Several youth worked to teach other dancers the line dances they had learned from the line dancing lessons offered earlier this summer by 4-H Council.

Kids have fun while trying to catch and eat the most donuts hanging from strings.

Building Strong Families develops partnership with WKAR

A partnership between Eaton County MSU Extension’s Building Strong Families (BSF) program and WKAR TV, MSU’s public broadcasting station, will provide area parents with training on parenting skills, emotion coaching, language development and emergent literacy skills.

“Parenting Counts”program will bring a new research-based parenting curriculum, DVD clips and supplies to Eaton County for use during the BSF program home visits and during the monthly Parents Supporting Parents playgroup.

The BSF program will also partner with Early Childhood Connections to present “Parenting Counts” in a workshop format. Topics to be covered during the workshop include handling stress and tantrums, valuing emotions, understanding child development, and building communication skills.

Family Nutrition Program touches wide variety of Eaton residents

It might be called the Family Nutrition Program (FNP), but this MSU Extension initiative touches the lives of many varied Eaton County residents.

In one effort, Becky Oosterhouse,FNP associate, recently workedwith inmates at the Lighthouse for Men facility in Delta Township. She taught participants the basics of cooking and good nutrition.

The Lighthouse facility helps former prisoners transition back to society while they do community service and learn new trades.

The sessions went for five weeks and each week the men picked a recipe. They purchased the ingredients for each recipe and learned meal planning skills. The men also learned how to cook for several people as they prepared meals for all 13 men who lived in the house.

Each session included three to six residents and lasted about two hours. The first lesson focused on basic cooking skills. Theparticipants watched a DVD on cooking, took a quiz and then put those skills to practice.

The second lesson was on the food guide pyramid, and participants learned the importance of eating a variety of foods.

The third lesson was on food safety. The men played food safety bingo after reviewing the terms.

The fourth lesson was on reading food labels and the fifth lesson was on meal planning.

Additionally, Oosterhouse has been working with 304 students from kindergarten through fifth grades at the Bellevue Elementary School.She did a four week series on nutrition and health.

The first week focused on the food guide pyramid and emphasized the importance of all the foods in the pyramid on the human body.

The second week focused on fruits and vegetables and their importance in the diet as well as ways to eat them.

The third week focused on food safety and the importance of proper hand washing.

The fourth week focused on trying new foods, understanding that our taste buds change, and how to make healthy snack choices.

2008 Fall Conservation Tour Highlights

Thirty-seven farmers, ranchers and conservationists took part in the 2008 Fall Conservation Tour on Sept. 12. The highlights of the day were a Woodbury ethanol plant tour, unused pesticide collection and three on-farm tours that demonstrated environmentally and economically friendly fertilizer practices and Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program verification.

The speakers for the tour were representatives of MSU Extension, the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the Michigan Groundwater Stewardship Program, Eaton and Barry County conservation districts, Ionia County Resource Recovery, Agrium Fertilizer Incorporated and US Bio-Energy Corporation.

Participants brought more than a ton of unwanted pesticides for safe disposal. After listening to the speakers discuss environmental protection, 85 percent indicated they are likely to adapt better groundwater stewardship practices. Thirty-eight percent said they were likely to change their fertilizer and pesticide practices to better suit their farms. The total acres affected by this change added up to 2,410 acres.

When the question was posed, “Your tax dollars support this educational event either totally or in part. Do you want your tax dollars to continue to support this type of program? The answer was a resounding “yes’ by 95% of the participants.

They listed plant population studies, nitrogen fertilizer rate, Citizen’s edible soybean plant, and record keeping as potential topics for the 2009 tour.