Just a year ago, the Byemoor Beef 4-H club narrowly missed having to fold, as with nine members, it barely skirted the minimum required membership of eight.
It does not look like the club will have the same problems this year, as its organizational meeting last Thursday, Oct. 20, brought in 25-30 people, and left leaders Tara Schilling and Suzanne Sorensen with a tentative membership well up from last year.
"We're expecting to have about 14 kids," Sorensen said. "We're pretty excited."
Sorensen, who describes herself as a "4-H lifer," started helping the club two years ago, this year marking her third as assistant leader.
"I was a member of 4-H for about 10 years," she said. "I was a lifer. The skills, the experience ... I could apply it all to my life."
Sorensen said she was a shy child before she joined 4-H, so shy in fact that meeting new people would make her run.
By the end of her time in 4-H, Sorensen was winning scholarships and publicly speaking about her projects and 4-H in general.
It was that strong effect on her own life that led Sorensen to come back to 4-H about a decade after she aged out of the program, even before her own daughter was old enough to join. For her, it is not about her own children's experience with the club, but ensuring all children can experience what 4-H has to offer.
That her own daughter is old enough to join the Cleaver Kids, the six-to-eight year old program named after mascot Cleaver the Beaver, is just icing on the cake for Sorensen.
Members of the beef club start out with a calf in the autumn, and raise it over the winter months. Raising a calf, which could be a bull calf (which eventually becomes a steer), or a heifer, includes everything from daily feeding to tending, including marketing and butchering. It is important for children involved in the program to understand that the animal they are raising is not a pet, Sorensen noted, but admitted that no matter how much the head understands that fact, the heart still creates bonds.
"I cried every year," Sorensen admitted. "You do create a bond. You feed it every morning and night, you groom it, you take care of it if it's sick. Then you take it to market to be butchered. It's just part of it."
Beef club members can take part in several different types of projects – the steer project, the heifer project, the cow and calf project, and the full herd project – which is decided by the type of animal the 4-H member is raising.
Members who start with a heifer can breed her, which ensures that the following year, the member can embark on the cow and calf project. Members who have five animals have a full herd – a family tree that starts with the first cow – but not as many members take on that project.
"It's a lot of work," Sorensen said. "I did that one year. Just wow."
It is relatively inexpensive to join 4-H, as the membership fees are fairly inexpensive. The true cost of the program is the calf itself, which – depending on the markets that year – can come in at several hundred dollars. Sorensen said after this year, she would not be surprised if calves were valued at around $1,000.
For 4-Hers raising steers, there is profit at the end of the season after the steer is sold, even after its cost to purchase and raise.
"I used my steer money to buy a car, pay for school, things like that," Sorensen said. "Then in one year, BSE happened, and everything fell apart. You need to be ready for those bad years."
The Byemoor 4-H Beef club has its official kickoff with its weigh-day on Sunday, Nov. 6, where the year's calves are weighed. At the end of the year, 4-H members will submit their projects, which captures their calf's year from tiny hoof to final sale or breeding.