4-H Clubs

There is a reunion coming up of 4-H members. It will be on July 5th, 2008, at the Cayuga County Fairgrounds in Weedsport, NY.
The organizers are asking for old memorabilia and photos, so I have begun looking through some old scrapbooks. It has brought up lots of great memories.
I, like most of Wyckoff Road north of Hunter Road, belonged to the Wyckoff Highlanders through the mid-50’s and 60’s. I don’t know the origin of the club name, but it was around for a long time. Our skills were mainly in baking, sewing, raising animals and gardening. That’s because those were the skills of the volunteer leaders we had.
Our leaders were our parents. We attended a meeting, paid dues and elected officers, conducted business and then some part of the meeting would be dedicated to an activity.
We had a lot of fun at those meetings, and we learned a lot too. I remember attending a session on basic electricity, taught at the (by then abandoned) one-room School #2 on the corner of Wyckoff and Skillett Roads. One parent taught us how to properly iron a shirt, with gusto! I learned to sew almost anything from another cherished leader and got the blue ribbons to prove it.
We baked muffins and biscuits; pies and cakes. Our goal was to enter them at the County Fair and win a blue ribbon, and perhaps be selected to go on to the State Fair. Of course we needed to practice, so our families were our lab rats. To this day I cannot choose cherry pie for dessert and I have 2 older sisters to thank for that!
I’ve mentioned the website http://www.fultonhistory.com/ before; it is an awesome searchable site of newspaper articles. So I searched and you guessed it – found an article on my sister’s cherry pie recipe!According to the Auburn Citizen of November 7, 1954, Cynthia Stoker and her cousin Joan Minde entered, for the second year, the cherry pie contest held at NYSEG, then located on North Street in Auburn. After the judges were through, Cynthia won by a mere 2 points over her cousin Joan – the exact opposite of the previous year. The article contains the entire recipe. When I shared a copy with these two ladies, they had lots more memories to talk about. If you have some to share, send us a comment!
I will write some more about the 4-H and the county fair this week.