Commissioners updated on 4-H progress in nationals fundraising, Cake Wars

Halfway through the Friday, March 31, meeting of the Phillips County Board of County Commissioners, Colorado State University Extension Instructor Jessie Stewart gave an update welcomed by everyone present. With “amazing support” from the community and “far beyond as well,” she said, the Phillips-Yuma 4-H Livestock Judging Team may gain the $30,000 needed for its upcoming trip to Edinburgh, Scotland: equal to $6,000 for each of the five kids.

4-H students set to arrive in Scotland include Lucinda Mares, Bradie Midcap, Brock Miller, Brooklyn Plumb and Carnahan Kellum.

Originally, Stewart said, the group only had expected to gain 50% of the required amount, but its fundraising work exceeded the goal. To raise money, the team hosted a silent auction at a cattle show in January, sold livestock genetics and sale credits online, served a meal at Lucy’s Place in Sedgwick on March 18, and wrote letters to livestock producers and large agricultural businesses across the United States. 

Currently, the group is hosting an “Egg My Yard” fundraiser, where it will fill Easter eggs and place them on the property of families who sign up with a small fee. Eggs will appear Easter morning on Sunday, April 9, having been placed in yards the night before by 4-H students.

Phillips-Yuma 4-H has received numerous checks of support from local families, businesses and agricultural producers. From outside the local area, Stewart told the commissioners, further financial aid arrived from Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Colorado Pork Producers Council and Sterling Livestock Commission, along with producers in Missouri and Kentucky.

“We’re not really sure how [far-reaching] this has gotten,” she said. “Now, it’s like the whole nation is behind us, which is really neat for the kids to see.”

To help the group, checks may be sent to Phillips County 4-H / P.O. Box 328 / Holyoke, CO 80734 with a memo line of “Livestock Judging trip” or a similar phrase.

Back in November 2022, the Livestock team earned a third-place win at the North American International Livestock Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky. Twenty-eight teams competed overall, with 107 contestants. This will be the first time Phillips County competes at nationals; each student may only compete once as a 4-H member.

“We’ve had a lot of kids join our Livestock Judging Team, which is not surprising, but I think we can do it again soon,” Stewart said. “We have some really, really talented kids coming up. Some of them are first years, and you’d think they were doing it for four or five years.

“Not going to lie, before that, I was like, ‘I’m never going to get to go to Scotland. I’m never going to get to do this again,’” she continued, laughing.

The Livestock Judging Team will leave “before you know it,” Stewart said, in June.

Cake Wars

Next up, she discussed her 4-H group’s first annual Phillips County Cake Wars, held Friday, March 17, in the Phillips County Event Center. Fourteen children ages 5 to 17 learned from Shera and Emmalee Kiess of Washington County on the process of preparing a cake board, creating one’s own frosting and smoothing the frosting upon a cake.

“Then we had a plan and design period… I made them all guess what they thought the theme was going to be, and then I told them the theme: animals,” she said. “Man, those kids just ran wild with it. Some of them did an ocean theme; some of them, their entire cake was the face of a chicken. Some of them made a rainforest, a zoo, pigs in mud; we had A to Z, everything.”

To acquire decoration items, children used fictitious money, called “cake cash,” at the cake store. With $100 in cake cash, they needed to make financial decisions: For example, coffee grounds cost $10, animal crackers $20 and sugar decorations $40. When some realized they had used this money unwisely, Stewart noted, they began to barter with one another, adding a new element to the process.

Shera and Jodi Clapper of My Country Cupboards coffee shop served as judges in the final contest, and Stewart had to serve as tie-breaker for the winner, a role she found difficult.

“We didn’t judge it in front of the kids, so at least there was that piece of it,” she said, “but, ‘I don’t want to pick. I can’t pick between these kids.’”

The Cloverbud champion of Cake Wars was Dawsyn Daniel, Kortlyn Carpenter and Allison Plumb won for the junior team, Sawyer Phipps topped the intermediate category, and the senior team of Lucinda Mares and Bella Campbell claimed victory as seniors.

Following the contest, parents watched a show-and-tell, where the 4-H students explained why they made their choices in decoration. “It was a huge hit,” Stewart said, and parents told her afterwards, “This has to come back every single year. They loved it.”

Moms became less enthused, she noted, as – en masse – their kids joined 4-H’s cake-decorating project, yet another event to fit into their schedules.

“Great,” they told Stewart. “Thank you so much.”

More information on the 4-H group may be found online at https://www.phillipscounty4h.org/ or by calling its office at 970-854-3616.