Information

2025 Meat Chicken and Meat Duck Order Forms Available

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The 2025 Meat Chicken Pool and 2025 Meat Duck Pool order forms are now available. Forms are due with payment to the Licking County Extension Office by 4:00pm on Friday, April 18, 2025. ALL junior fair exhibitors who are planing to enter market chicken or market duck classes at the Hartford Fair MUST purchase their chickens or ducks through the poultry pool ordering process.

Hartford Fair Logo

OSU Extension Small Farm Conference

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OSU Extension Small Farm Conference to be held – at Ohio State University Wooster Shisler Center Wooster, Ohio

By: Julie Wayman

Community Development Educator

OSU Extension Ashtabula County

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Ohio State Extension announced plans to host a Small Farm Conference in Wooster, OH on March 8th. The theme for this year’s Small Farm Conference is “Sowing Seeds for Success.”

Conference session topics are geared to beginning and small farm owners as well as to farms looking to diversify their operation. There will be five different conference tracks including: Horticulture and Crop Production, Business Management, Livestock, Natural Resources and Diversifying Your Enterprise.

Some conference topic highlights include: Growing in a Hoophouse, Integrated Disease Management Strategies for Apple and Peaches, High Tunnel Tour, Using Cover Crops for Soil Regeneration, Creating Habitat for Beneficial Insects on the Farm, Growing Microgreens, Money to Grow: Grants 101, Growing Your Farm With Agritourism, Navigating Licenses/Certificates for your Small Farm Market, How Can Value – Added Help Your Farm, Vaccination Programs for a Small Farm, Grassfed Beef Tour.

Anyone interested in developing, growing or diversifying their small farm is invited to attend including market gardeners, farmers market vendors, and anyone interested in small farm living.

Attendees will have the opportunity to browse a trade show featuring the newest and most innovative ideas and services for their farming operation. The conference provides an opportunity to talk with the vendors and network with others.

The Conference will take place from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. at the Ohio State University Wooster Campus Shisler Conference Center, 1680 Madison Ave, Wooster, Ohio 44691.

For conference and registration information call OSU Extension Morrow County 419-947-1070, or OSU Extension Knox County 740-397-0401. Please follow this link to register for the conference: https://Go.osu.edu/2025smallfarmconference

Ohio BASS Nation Community Club

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If you have a passion for the great sport of bass fishing, but do not have a school or community sponsored team, the Ohio BASS Nation now has a way for you to compete at the state level, with the potential to earn scholarship funds, and a path to the national stage! All anglers who currently attend high school in the state of Ohio are invited to join a “Community Club.”

Visit the Ohio BASS Nation website or contact Tasha Burgess, Ohio BASS Nation Youth Director, at obnyouth@gmail.com for more information.

President’s Environmental Youth Award

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Encourage youth with an existing environmental stewardship project or an idea for a project to apply so that their achievements can be further recognized. The President’s Environmental Youth Award (PEYA) recognizes outstanding environmental stewardship projects developed by K-12 youth. The PEYA program promotes awareness of our nation’s natural resources and encourages positive community involvement.

Youth must have completed their project while they were in kindergarten through the 12th grade and the project must be sponsored by an adult who is 21 or older. Applicants from all 50 states as well as U.S. territories are eligible to compete for a national Presidential award.

Visit the President’s Environmental Youth Aware webpage for more information about eligibility requirements, judging criteria, and how to apply.

America’s Field Trip

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America’s Field Trip is designed to engage America’s youth in commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. The contest invites ​​3rd–12th grade students to reflect on what America means to them through artwork, poems, and essays for a chance to explore the historic places that have shaped our nation’s rich history. The 2024-2025 contest is now live and will accept submissions through April 16, 2025.

Student awardees will be able to:

  • Participate in a three-day, two-night field trip this summer with airfare and lodging expenses covered for the student awardee and their chaperone
  • Take part in specially curated educational experiences and behind-the-scenes tours at some of the nation’s most iconic historical and cultural sites from the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo to the National Archives, Yellowstone National Park, and Fort Point at the Golden Gate Bridge

America250 has also worked with Discovery Education to develop lesson plans and other resources to help educators bring the America’s Field Trip contest to their classrooms.

REMINDER: 2025 Ohio 4-H Conference

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The 2025 Ohio 4-H Conference will be held on Saturday, March 8, 2025 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. The conference is a great opportunity to gather new ideas, get updates about 4-H, meet/connect with new people, and celebrate our volunteers and teens. The conference includes break out sessions for both teens and adult volunteers, as well as a luncheon, trade show, and silent auction. You can find a list of sessions, registration form, vendor application, and silent auction donation form HERE. Cost to attend is $40 per person.

Please return the registration form along with payment to the Licking County Extension Office by February 6, 2025 so that we can get you registered before the deadline. Check should be made payable to: Licking County 4-H Committee.

2025 Project Guide (formerly called the Family Guide)

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The 2025 Project Guides (formerly called the Family Guide) are on their way to 4-H families through mail. Thank to support from Kroger, every family that had either a youth or adult volunteer enrolled in 4-H in 2024 should receive a Project Guide, along with a sheet of stickers in the mail within the next week or so. Families that were not enrolled last year (skipped a year or are new to the program) can pick up a Project Guide at the Extension Office or can access the online version at https://ohio4h.org/familyguide.

2025 Turkey Pool Order Forms Available

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The order form for the 2025 Hartford Fair Junior Market Turkey Pool is now available HERE. Forms with payment must be mailed or delivered to the Licking County Extension Office by 4:00pm on Friday, March 7, 2025. ALL meat turkey projects will come from the Hartford Fair meat turkey pool. If you intend to show meat turkeys at the fair in 2025, you must submit an order by the deadline to be eligible. Please read through all the details on the order form.

2025 Enrollment Information

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It’s time to get enrolled for 2025! Enrollments are due April 1, 2025. Please review the information below before starting your enrollment.

Your login credentials are the same as last year. If you have forgotten your password, please use the Reset Password option to reset your password. If you no longer have access to the email account you used last year, please email Adrienne (anderson.1410@osu.edu) so she can update your family profile. DO NOT CREATE A NEW FAMILY PROFILE. This messes up the system and causes more work in the end. Please just reach out to Adrienne so that she can help you get access to your profile.

Instructions on how to log in and enroll can be found on the How to Join 4-H page here: https://licking.osu.edu/program-areas/4-h-youth-development/how-join-4-h.  Scroll down to the instructions for RETURNING Families. There are step-by-step instructions that you can view and print, a tip sheet, and a video.

Once you have reviewed the instructions, visit oh.4honline.com to login and enroll. Please note that the site works best in Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

A few things to note:

  • If anyone in your family has been enrolled in 4-H anywhere in Ohio since 2014, you will have a family profile. If you have trouble accessing your family profile, please DO NOT create a new one. Contact Adrienne (anderson.1410@osu.edu) and she will help you get access to your existing profile.
  • If you have a family member who has “skipped” a year or two of 4-H, their profile may have been archived. Please contact Adrienne and let her know to reactivate the profile. Please DO NOT create a new profile. We want to utilize the existing profile for each member as all of their 4-H history is attached to the original profile.
  • Please take the time to review each member’s profile as you enroll them to ensure ALL the information is there and correct. Please update any contact information that may have changed since last year. If your contact information isn’t correct in 4-HOnline, it won’t be correct in FairEntry as the data from 4-HOnline is imported into FairEntry in May.
  • Please be sure that all projects are included and correct BEFORE you submit an enrollment. You will NOT be able to make changes to club/project enrollment once you click the Submit button. If you are not able to complete the enrollment in one sitting or are trying to decide on projects, the system will save each page of progress. You can leave that enrollment and come back to it later. Once you have submitted your enrollment, any changes regarding club and project enrollment will need to be made through Adrienne.
  • Once you submit an enrollment, it will be listed as “awaiting review” until it is reviewed at the county level. It will either be approved or will be sent back to you if there is something that needs fixed.
  • If you select a livestock, horse, dog, or shooting sports project the system will ask you to electronically sign the consent for those projects.
  • Cloverbud members should select the project 710 Cloverbud Activities for their enrollment.
  • Those joining the Licking County 4-H Band should select COP-Arts 1900 Performing Arts – 4-H Band for their project. It will be listed towards the end of the project list with the other County Only Projects (COP).

Advisor Specific Information:

  • When selecting your role, please select Club Volunteer. You will then select the appropriate role for your advisor role within the club. Please see descriptions below before selecting your role. If you have a question on which role to select, please reach out to Adrienne.
    • Organizational Club Leader – Only the head advisor of the club should select this as their role.
    • Cloverbud Leader – Advisors whose main role is to work with Cloverbuds should select this role.
    • Club Project Leader – Any advisor who doesn’t fall into one of the previous two categories should select this role.
  • Please do NOT add any projects to your enrollment. While the option is there, we do not want you to add any projects you work with under the project section as it will include you in our project enrollment numbers and we don’t want that.
  • Please remember that until your submit your enrollment AND I’ve had the chance to approve it, you will not have access to your club profile. You must be an approved volunteer within the system before it will allow you access to your club.
  • If it is your year to have your background check renewed, please remember that I cannot approve your enrollment until the background check has been cleared by our data manager at the Ohio 4-H Center. Background checks have been taking anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months in the past few years, so please don’t delay in getting that completed.

Calling All Gardeners! 2025 Ohio Garden Trials

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The 2025 Home Garden Trials are now available. It’s hard to believe that it’s already time to start ordering seeds. The trials are open to any home gardener in the state of Ohio. This means you and all of your friends. This is the seventh year of the trials and we have some exciting news. We have brought back a cut flower trial, a herb trial, and a youth trial (to get the kids excited about gardening). We’ve been listening to feedback and this year we’ve added lots of varieties that can be grown in containers.

The purpose of the trials is to have gardeners grow 2 varieties of a vegetable or flower side-by-side and then give us their feedback through our online reporting site. To learn more details about the trials, you can visit the Trials Home Page

There are a total of 13 trials this year. You can select to do from one to five vegetable trials plus the flower, herb, and youth trials. Community Gardens can choose to do all 13, if they would like. The cost of each trial is $3 plus shipping. If you pick up your order at the Athens County Extension Office, there are reduced shipping charges. To see a description of this year’s trials AND to place your order for this year, visit the 2025 Trials Home. The deadline to order is Feb. 16 for guaranteed seeds or March 2 for remaining seeds.

The seeds for this year’s trials have been donated by Rupp Seed.

This year we have:

Cool Season veggies

  • Carrots
  • Lettuce
  • Peas
  • Spinach
  • Beets

Warm Season Vegetables

  • Cucumbers
  • Green Beans
  • Summer Squash
  • Peppers (Sweet)
  • Tomatoes (Cherry)

Flowers

  • Zinnias

Herbs

  • Parsley

Youth

  • Crazy Beans