Last week, the Chenango County 4-H Ribbon Wranglers, Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Leader and 4-H Leaders met at the CCE building in Norwich for a creative and festive evening to make gifts for others. (Submitted photo)

RWICH — Recently when the Chenango County Ribbon Wranglers teamed up for an evening of creativity, 4-H leaders and youth members worked together with ignited generosity to bake and create hand made items to gift to others.

“We met at the Cornell Corporate Extension (CCE) office in Norwich and with the help of Whitney Kmetz, CCE SNAP-Ed Team Leader, the kids baked cranberry muffins,” said 4-H Team Leader Beverly Lenz-Fagan.

“They measured out all of the ingredients by themselves, mixed up the batches and put them in the oven to bake,” said Lenz-Fagan.

“The ages of the Ribbon Wranglers is from five to 12, it's a young group and they had a lot of fun,” she said. “Of course, they reaped the benefits by eating the muffins after they cooled.”

She said with the help of Co-Leader Markie Beckert, they put together aromatic ingredients to use in simmer pots. They put them in baggies to take home and gift to their parents or grandparents and also created Christmas cards to hand out at Chase Memorial in New Berlin.

“I hope as they hand out their Christmas cards to the residents at the Chase Nursing home, they give them a little gift of joy,” Lenz-Fagan said. “They were so excited to sign and color them.”

4-H Co-Leader Markie Beckert said she will be joined by a few of the Ribbon Wranglers to distribute the Christmas cards on Christmas Eve.

“About 16 kids filled out the cards and we hope to walk through and see many of the residents in person,” said Beckert. “But we'll have to see because last year there were some illnesses, so we couldn't hand them out directly to them, we will see this year.”

“The kids are very excited because we have been to Chase Memorial a few times. We usually go up in the summer and bring a petting zoo with us,” Beckert said. “We've also made some bird feeders for the residents and put them outside so they can watch the birds.”

She said the kids really love going up the hill to Chase, some of the older kids wrote sweet quotes in the cards, giving positive messages, one said, 'You're amazing'.

Beckert believes the event helped educate the youth to think beyond themselves and that looking out for other people is really important.

“I think this teaches the youth what they do is really important and looking out for other people and creating bonds like this is amazing,” she said.”They are so excited to do things like this, it's really sweet.”

Lenz-Fagan said the holiday party accomplished creating items for others and enjoying time together.

“We just wanted to have a little Christmas party with the kids and enjoy the time and have fun and that's what we did,” she said.

“The things we do are very educational and we're so fortunate that our group gets along as well as they do,” she added. “It's a lot of fun.”

Lenz-Fagan said she enjoys leading 4-H youth and noted it's one of her favorite things, to help and watch the kids as they work with each other. She said it's magic to watch their pure innocence and love as they create gifts for others.

“We do many different things through the year, during the summer there were some benches at the Chobani fields that had rotted out, so one of our community projects with the kids was to replace the boards,” Lenz-Fagan said.

She explained they enjoy a variety of activities as the 4-H program is not just about farming, although that was the start, it was all about agriculture, and it still is a big focus, but now she said they have added many additional programs.

“There are so many programs to choose from,” said Lenz-Fagan. “Woodworking, gardening, animals, book club, hiking club, aeronautics, electricity, 3D printing, conservation, whatever their interest are, we cover it.”

Beckert said they love doing everything with 4-H, its a wonderful program and are always looking for things to volunteer to do, if anyone needs them for anything, definitely reach out as they would love to help the community in any way they can.

For more 4-H information or to join, visit the website at cce.cornell.edu/chenango or their Facebook page Chenango County 4-H Youth Development.