Summerville 4-H Club makes learning and helping others fun
/by Victoria Mellish
The Summerville 4-H Club of P.E.I. is a club of 24 members and 12 screened leaders from the Murray Harbour, Cardigan, and Montague areas. As a member of our club, you need to complete a project, present a speech or demonstration, do something for your community, and experience an agriculture awareness activity. We offer projects from sewing to gardening to building to all kinds of livestock projects. All of our members enjoy their projects while getting to know one another and their community too. Our club has had fun being involved in the community for almost 65 years.
The club was founded by Rev. John Cash in 1955. Later on, the community of Alberry Plains joined the Summerville club. In the late 1970s, the club fell to the wayside and the Summerville members were attending meetings in Alberry Plains under the leadership of Martina Doyle. In 1982, Lorraine VanDyke and Jeannie Daly took up the challenge of reorganizing the Summerville Countyline 4-H Club. Today, the Summerville 4-H Club’s overall leadership is shared by Johann Holland and Debbie Keefe.
The Summerville 4-H Club is very involved in the community. We try to do something good for our community as often as we can. Some of the things we do include memorial tree planting at the Southern Kings Consolidated School, participating in the Remembrance Day service in Montague, doing good things for the seniors in our community, and making cards for people in the hospital.
One of our senior members, Haley Ferguson, created her own project – each Christmas we put together gift bags filled with toiletries, puzzles, pens, treats, and other things to enjoy, and we hand them out to seniors in our area. This year, we made around 20 gift bags.
One of my favourite things we do as a club is game night at the Perrin’s Marina Villa, a community care facility on the Montague waterfront. We go down to the game room and the residents can come play games with our club. We play shuffleboard, crib, crokinole, and snakes and ladders. Everyone has a good time and the seniors seem to really appreciate it.
Another thing our club does, along with other clubs in our region, is carolling at the Riverview Manor, a long-term care facility. Everyone from our club who goes loves it and I think the residents there enjoy it a lot too.
For almost every holiday, the Summerville 4-H Club members make cards to send to patients at the hospital who can’t go home for the holidays in hopes that it makes their day a bit brighter.
Another great thing about our club is the awesome activities we do. Some of the fun things we do are sleigh rides, pool and pizza, and – this one’s probably my favourite – Burger Love and bowling! In April, our club goes to The Alley in Charlottetown where we bowl and then we eat their Burger Love creation. It’s fun and delicious. The pool and pizza outing is pretty great too! Once a year, our club goes to the TCAP community centre in Montague to swim, and when we’re done we head to the party room and have pizza. The activities we do as a club are really fun and we all have a great time.
To complete our 4-H year, we have to present a speech or a demonstration in front of three judges and our club members. Our selected club representatives do very well at the regional competition. Since 2015 (and years before), we’ve always had someone from our club make it from the regional competition to the provincial competition. From animal stories to baking to cool experiences, each of our members has great stories to tell and we all enjoy listening to them.
We also have to do an agricultural awareness activity with our club. Some of the things we have done in the past have included visiting Lloyd Jenkins’s rabbit farm, the Fleece and Harmony sheep farm, MacPhee’s maple syrup operation, and Kouwenberg’s dairy farm. Just last year, we had a presentation on owls and dissected owl pellets. It’s really cool to go see the different farms and learn about the different types of farming and agriculture.
The Summerville 4-H Club is a great club. We try to help others where we can, we make learning new skills fun, and we all have a good time. Because of COVID-19, the future of the Summerville 4-H Club meetings and activities are postponed indefinitely. On the upside, 4-H PEI is giving us the chance to do online projects so we can keep learning to do by doing!
(Victoria Mellish is an intermediate member and the secretary for the Summerville 4-H Club. She has completed the horse and pony, poultry, food and you, and crafts projects, and is currently working on her photography project.)
