Break Time!

SPRING BREAK HAS ARRIVED!! But hey, we all know that news never sleeps! While I was able to get away for a good chunk of break and breathe a bit of newsroom-free air, I spent the first weekend of spring break in town covering an event hosted by a program near and dear to my heart, 4-H. 

From left, Chase Stone, Aaron Schmalzried and Carson Rohaus try the milkweed activity on Saturday, March 24 in between dances at the 2018 state Teen Conference. The activity was emphasized the difficulty of surviving as a monarch caterpillar and showed participants what dangers Monarchs face in early stages of life.

Aaron Schmalzried, left, and Chase Stone dangle their magnet ‘caterpillar’ over the plastic milkweed plant in an attempt to pick up ‘food’ pieces placed on the milkweed leaves. “We learned about how hard it is for a monarch butterfly to live,” Stone said.

Magnetic dots sit on plastic milkweed leaves between activity participants. The dots are colored green to symbolize food and yellow or with pictures to show dangers caterpillars face. Birds are one of many predators monarch caterpillars must avoid.

Workshop participants added ideas for land management on aerial photographs in hopes of learning more about Missouri management. Participants chose three different land management techniques to apply to the land plots on their image.

Kendrick Stunz, 12, from Henry County, replaces dots of food onto a fake milkweed plant after completing the activity on Saturday, March 24.

For those who don’t know me, I grew up in the 4-H program and it remains one, if not the, most impactful program I have yet been a part of. My experience with the program draws my interest back to hear about the new and unique programs that Missouri 4-H has to offer. Colorado 4-H is, I have come to realize, starkly different from Missouri 4-H simply by nature of the type of agriculture dominating each state. 

One of these programs I had not seen before coming to Missouri is the Ag Innovators Experience program, a state-wide youth led group who works with a new theme each year to teach peers about specific elements of land management, species control, agriculture, etc. This year’s theme is Monarchs on the Move, designed to educate youth on the importance of the Monarch butterfly in Missouri agriculture and to help teach different land management techniques that can be applied in Missouri environments. 

Through the process of both reporting and photographing this event, I found myself more comfortable than I had felt reporting a story in a while. Knowing how much calmer I felt to be reporting stories that I personally had a connection to, I am excited both to continue developing stories of the same variety as well as push myself even farther out of my comfort zone to see how much I can become comfortable with reporting. Further I think spending so much time around people in the age group 18-25 made me forget just how much I love working with and around kids, so I am excited to try to shift my attention back to reporting on and working in collaboration with all different age groups, the farther from my age the better!