(guitar music) (upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to "Sunup".

I'm Lyndall Stout, we are spending some time this week on "Sunup" talking about 4-H, one of the most important and longest running youth development programs anywhere in the world and of course, it's a pillar of OSU Extension and even though this building on the OSU Campus for 4-H will be coming down soon, momentum for the program remains strong as does, of course, the focus on local communities in 4-H. As you can see from this "Sunup" story from a couple of years back.

(country music) (kids talking) - So, today we are building scarecrows to enter into the county fair and we're also painting kindness rocks for the garden.

- [Narrator] South Rock Creek 4-H Club meetings are usually wonderfully hectic.

Add county fair season into the mix and the hectic meter jumps up a few notches.

(kids talking) For club leader, Linda Goodson, this is how it shouldn't be.

- [Girl] Do you want us to water it when we get home?

- We'll water it here.

About twice a month we have a gardening and fun games in the garden and then we do crafts and we do robots and we plant.

- [Narrator] Weather permitting, the garden is the headquarters for the 4-H Club.

Today's meeting is all about the scarecrow, an effigy that's supposed to resemble someone in particular.

- It's good enough.

Usually men have things in their pockets.

So, it's supposed to be, we our principal Coach Rosser and we decided that we should make something that kind of looks like him.

- So, we have a scarecrow and that staircase of him.

- [Narrator] Does it look like him?

- [In Unison] No.

- [Narrator] Garden projects and county fair scarecrows seem like a long standing tradition for South Rock Creek 4-Her's.

It's not, the garden in the club are brand new.

- 4-H is county wide.

We had clubs at Bethel and Tecumseh, but we did not have have a club here at this school.

My grandchildren decided that they wanted to start showing sheep and so we needed a club to join.

And we also are gonna talk about- - [Narrator] So, last year we went to started one.

South Rock Creek is a rural school and community, so she didn't have high expectations for a big turnout.

- The very first meeting that I had, I had 35 kids that signed up.

I was totally overwhelmed.

I thought I'd have my grandchildren's very best friends and we'd have six or eight, but it really told me that the parents really saw a need.

- We were so excited because we saw some other friends at different schools have 4-H and we were like, "We want that too."

- [Narrator] So, you were jealous?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we were jealous.

- [Narrator] And the first order of business for the club, constructing a community garden.

- [Linda] It just kind of came to me.

I love kids and I love gardening and two of my passions and they just needed to go together.

- I knew that Linda had great ideas for the garden, but seeing it as a completed project is super impressive.

- [Narrator] Sitting right next to the school, the garden isn't just for 4-H use only, its main purpose is for community outreach.

- [Linda] We decided on the picnic tables, so the teachers can bring their classrooms and classwork out into the garden.

- [Narrator] Vegetables are even harvested and served in the cafeteria.

- It's really refreshing as a 4-H educator to see kids really enjoying what 4-H is.

There's project areas for everyone.

It's not just for livestock, it's for science and technology with public speaking.

- Not everybody's gonna be an athlete and everybody's gonna have their own little niche of things that they can do and we offer a few things athletically here, but for a large number of our kids there really wasn't something that they could get involved in.

(kids talking) - [Narrator] A 4-H Club is in a way, much like a community garden, it's flourishing is determined by how much care, dedication and teamwork is put into cultivating it, attributes the South Rock Creek Club has, taught by the person who planted the seed in the first place.

- It's perfect.

- Well, when Linda finds something that she is dedicated herself to want to do, it doesn't matter how much time, how much energy, if she had to spend all of their own money to do it, she would do it.

- I have such a wonderful parents group base and I have a lot of young ones this year that signed up and it's those moms that carry the torch after I move on.

- In Pottawatamie County, I'm Curtis Harry.

- I'll tell you when you serve in one of the military outfit, well you just learn to gain that respect for the flag.

- Not only a symbol for our country, but it also symbolizes so many other things and every piece of that flag means something.

- [Man] Symbol of the sacrifices that have been made.

- When I was liberated from a prison camp we was on the road to marching and then the guard said he won't have to walk no more after today.

It was good to see that old flag again.

- We need to treat it with respect because it's kind of like treating those people with the respect.

- It teaches a new generation about the respect for the flag and the right way to treat it.

- One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

- Doing a flag retirement because there were 188 flags, I believe, in the county and we needed to dispose of them, but we didn't want to just hand them over to someone else.

And we figured it would be a good thing to do for the community.

- When it comes to the time when I'm old and faded do not let me fly in disrepair.

Rather retire me from my duties only to replace me with a new flag so that I may continue to symbolize our country.

- The Flag retirement ceremony is very important in that it just really gives people a respect and knowledge of what that symbol is and how we should respect it all the way till the end.

- I believe that the field intact because no one should ever let the union be broken.

The flag should never be torn up like an old bed sheet.

It should be cut with scissors in a methodical manner.

- We decided to do it as kind of a public service where anyone can put one in.

- You get emotional sometime.

(Taps played on trumpet) - And we are here to sound live Taps for any time anybody needs Taps, mostly funerals, but also for Memorial days, Veterans days, flag retirements.

(Taps playing on trumpet) - Why do you fly the American flag?

- Well, its the greatest nation on Earth.

(upbeat music playing) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report, I'm Wes Lee.

After a wet start in the spring, the rainfall taps have been drastically reduced lately.

It has been multiple weeks now since significant rainfall has fallen in the Western half of the state.

Looking at this past week from Wednesday, we see that the dry weather continues with only limited amount of rainfall in the Eastern third of the state.

If we took a look at the year to date by month, we look kind of like a seesaw.

Wetter than normal in the first half of the year and mostly dryer in the latter half.

If it wasn't for a wet October for the state, we would be even in more serious shape.

Looking at the departure from normal map for the year through November, there is way more reds, indicating deficits than blues showing surpluses.

This line graph shows the cumulative rainfall for the north central climate division.

One of the most important regions for wheat production.

You can see the long-term normal with the blue line and this year's rainfall in black.

After July rainfall has been sparse.

It would take a five inch rain in December, that is not very likely based on the forecast, to get back to normal for the year.

Now here's Gary with a drought map, that is getting worse by the week.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, November is now in the books and it wasn't exactly kind to us.

We did see that drought start to expand once again, thanks to the hot dry weather.

Let's take a look at that and the latest drought monitor map and see where we're at.

When we look at the new map, really much of the Western half of the state is covered by at least moderate drought.

We do have some severe and exceptional drought, those darker browns and the dark reds.

But if you're not in drought you're in abnormally dry conditions which is a sign that you're heading into drought.

Now across the Eastern third or so of the state, we do have some areas free of drought or abnormally dry conditions, but we do have some pockets of moderate to severe drought starting to spread in Southeast Oklahoma and also up into Northeastern Oklahoma.

So not exactly a good picture as we start to enter the driest three months of the year, December through February.

The November rainfall map pretty much shows it all.

Really except for parts of east central Oklahoma, most of the states saw less than an inch rainfall and out in the panhandle, Beaver and Hooker and Slap Out and places like that did get a little bit of moisture.

But for the most part, the panhandle was almost entirely dry and that was the case also down across parts of southwestern Oklahoma, up in northwest Oklahoma.

So really not a bounty of a rainfall this November, and we definitely need more.

Taking a look at that November rainfall from another vantage point, this is the percent of normal rainfall for that timeframe.

We do see most areas less than 50% of normal rainfall.

Everybody had a shortfall for this November, so definitely not good.

And of course you see those far Western Oklahoma counties and also in the far Western panhandle with basically a zero.

So not good at all.

Let's take a look at those latest outlooks from the climate prediction center for December.

We do see for the precipitation outlook increased odds of below normal precipitation across the entire state of Oklahoma.

- But even greater increased odds across the Western half to two thirds of the state, especially the Oklahoma Panhandle in that region.

So definitely not a good outlook for precipitation.

And of course to have the temperatures up above normal during this timeframe, wouldn't help the drought situation either.

But I'm afraid that's exactly what the Climate Prediction Center sees for December.

Greatly increased odds of above normal temperatures across the Southern half of the state and increased odds of above normal temperatures across the Northern half of the state.

So really not a good picture there as well.

Putting it all together for the December drought outlook from the Climate Prediction Center once again, they do see that drought persisting or intensifying across the Western two thirds of the state, bleeding over into the Northeastern corner of the state, the far Northeast corner.

So if this map actually comes true, we will see a lot of drought in Oklahoma by the end of the year.

Okay, it does look dry for the next week or so on the thing we have to hope for is a pattern change as we get into later into the month, closer to Christmas you know, but we are entering the driest time of the year so anything we can get will certainly help.

That's it for this time, we'll see you next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

(upbeat music) - Good morning Oklahoma, welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

This week's topic is selection to improve cow efficiency.

And if you join us weekly, you know that we've talked a lot here in the past couple of months, about some standard measures we can take on our cow herd at the time we wean.

And one of those is to look at what our cows are weighing and consider that along with the weaning weights of calves, how many of our cows are pregnant and eventually look at something like what percentage of our cows mature weight are they actually weaning off?

And when we think about reproductive traits and we know they're very economically important in a commercial Cow-Calf operation that sells calves at weaning, but the underlying genetic component of reproductive efficiency generally falls into that category of being pretty low inheritability.

Now when we say it's low inheritability, it means it's largely influenced by the environment.

And the good news story for us there is that nutrition is a big part of environment.

So if we can balance the amount of cows we're running to our forage that we're producing and have that in check, it's how we can make sure a lot of our cows are actually getting bred and weaning off a calf every year.

But we look at something today, or possibly from a genetic or selection standpoint, more of what we could select for that's actually a moderately heritable trait.

And that would be mature cow size.

One of the big advantages we have with modern genetic prediction, and thinking about EPD values we get in all of our beef breeds, since EPDs are comparable against geography and time, let's say that when we weighed up our cow herd this fall of weaning, we realized our cows were weighing a little more than what we expected.

We're dealing with some excessive mature cow size.

If we go back and check out those registration papers and actually look at the genetic values for mature weight on the bull or bulls we have been using, regardless of the age of those bulls, and most beef breeds at this point have got some sort of a sire search or pedigree lookup tool that can be used online, so we can look those bulls up by registration number.

But if we take a look at the mature weight EPDs of the bulls we have been using, it helps us plan for the future relative to our breeding or selection program in identifying some bulls that we might buy, use through AI or turn out in the future that have got a little less mature weight.

As we've discussed on the past in Cow-Calf Corner, there's a lot of genetic values reported on beef cattle.

Each breeds look a little bit different, but one of the numbers you're gonna find in a sire summary or in the EPD values of about any breed, is a genetic value for mature weight.

If we can select for a little less or try to keep mature weight in check, while we continue to get the levels of calving ease, weaning weight, milk and maternal performance that we want in that next set of bulls that we turn out.

Over time, in a trait that is generally about 35% heritable, we can actually do some good of genetic selection to improve potential for other things, while trying to keep this mature weight down.

The long-term consequence of that, we've got cows that wean off a higher percentage of body weight, probably take a little fewer groceries over time as we have them in production.

So something handy we can put in our toolbox and consider the next time we select bulls.

As we conclude our thoughts on that this week, at the time we tape this, I'm getting ready to head to Louisville, and I wanna give a shout out to the 1981 and the 2010 National Champion OSU Livestock Teams that will both be commemorated in Louisville this year to recognize those National Championships.

Congratulations to that group of people.

I look forward to making that trip.

And as always, thank you all for joining us on Cow-Calf Corner.

- Dr. Kim Anderson, our crop marketing specialist, joins us now.

Kim, last week you mentioned that prices could get volatile and that turned out to be true.

- Yes, and they got volatile much sooner than I anticipated.

We've talked about over the holiday season that the volume is down and not a whole lot going on in the markets normally.

But so a small move, or a small purchase, or a small sale will cause prices to move forward.

We got a 63 cent price move in the wheat market in two days, Monday and Tuesday.

Prices fell from $8.47 down to 7.84.

Now the volatility in wheat pulled corn prices down about 20 cents, soybeans down around 40 cents.

Good volatility, not good volatility, but less than a 10% price move there.

And so, yes, we got volatility and I think it will continue to the first of the year.

- What do you think is behind this and why are we seeing these price shifts?

- Well, the market was talking about what caused that 63 cent price move in wheat.

Australia came out.

They've been getting rain on their crop.

They're talking about their quality's deteriorating a little bit.

There's been some speculation that their yields may go down.

Australia raised their production estimate and I think that had a big impact.

Also, I think the world's realizing that world wheat stocks are down from the last couple years.

However, there's still adequate wheat in the market to meet our needs.

- What other kind of market factors are you keeping an eye on?

- Well US wheat stocks are tight.

You go back three or four years, we had over a billion bushels of wheat ending stocks.

We're down below 600 million bushels right now.

Hard red winter wheat ending stocks, really tight.

So wheat stocks in the US are tight and they're going to remain tight 'til we get into next harvest.

Because right now we're finishing up Australia and Argentina's crops.

They'll be through it by the end of December.

And then the next exportable wheat to come on the market at harvest is the US wheat crop.

So there's not much out there that can change our supply situation between now and June of next year.

However, demand can cause these prices to move dramatically and that's what we saw this last week.

- What concerns do you have about prices?

- Well, one of the concerns I have is that we've had record wheat production.

The last two years, and this year is a little higher than last year so it's a new record, but it's barely higher.

But consumption is higher than our record wheat production and the question is why?

That increase in consumption coincides with COVID.

So is our increased use, our increased consumption because we're hoarding flour.

If you hoard flour and put it on the shelf at the house, that's gonna go down as used wheat but it's not used up.

So if things settle down or as we get our supply in our homes where we want it, then demand's gonna go down and that's going to have a negative impact on wheat, and then when the COVID situation gets normal, then we're going to use up that we got on the shelf and the band will go anymore.

So what concerns me is changes in demand, not necessarily changes in supply.

- And it affects a lot of other things too.

We're isolating wheat here, but this is a big concern.

- Wheat is tied with corn, beans, the other commodities that are tied together to a certain degree, and there's hoarding going on in all commodities and including in the meats.

- Okay.

Great perspective, Kim.

Thank you for helping us sort all this out and we'll see you again next week.

- [Reporter] Near the banks of the Red River, 4-H'er Doree Brashier lives with her family on a small farm in Bryan County.

Along with her sister Riley, Doree raises show goats and a variety of animals.

It seems like your typical Oklahoma farm with typical animals.

But Doree is also raising some unconventional livestock that can deliver more of a sting than a kick.

(bees buzzing) - Me and my family really, really like honey and we decided one day that we got tired of having to go look for honey everywhere to find, you know, honey that was made around here.

So we decided that we'd go buy a couple of hives.

- We started in 2013, I guess, with a couple of hives we bought the first year.

I kept up with it but really Doree kind of took it over and she's really been the spearhead on it.

- My favorite thing about bees is probably how they're like, they have this hair.

It's like fuzz on 'em but it's teeny tiny.

- [Reporter] Riley, what's your favorite thing about bees?

- I like honey.

I like the way the make honey and we just eat it.

- [Reporter] Doree's interest in bees flourished.

She is now managing nine hives, totaling about 250,000 bees.

She's become somewhat of the beekeeper of Bryan County.

If there is a hive on your property, you call Doree.

- We have rescued a couple of hives this past summer, just a few miles from our house.

One of 'em was at the sod farm on the back of a sod truck.

Me and my dad, we had to go rescue the bees.

- [Rick] Bees, whether they're wild bees or.

- Domesticated bees, I guess, whether they're in a tree or in a box, they will outgrow their hive that they're in and they'll split off.

Part of them will go find a new home with a new queen.

That's usually when we start getting phone calls with people having a swarm on the side of their house or on a tree in their yard.

- [Kurtis] While she's helping her community, Doree is playing a role in a solution to a bigger problem.

- The bees are endangered.

They're really gettin' scarce.

It's gettin' harder and harder to raise 'em.

Between Doree and Riley, both the girls have really recognized that there is a need for bees.

- The population of bees across the world have been decreasing and hives such as these has been popping up to help combat the issue.

Bryan County Extension Educator Robert Bourne says it's awesome to see the younger generation step up and pitch in.

- It's really refreshing to see those folks that want to bring their kids up and learning about the natural resources that we have here on Earth.

- [Kurtis] Doree brought her passion for these insects to 4-H. Last summer she was named the state record book winner in agriculture and natural resources for her work with bees.

- 4-H has taught me a lot of things about friendship and how having friends to help you, you know, on your projects, and just being there for you is a great way to grow up.

- I think Doree is a great role model.

She wants to take on leadership roles and help out with the county.

She's always there to be a bright shining star to those younger kids, and they look up to Doree.

- It was something fun for my wife and I to kind of get started in, but since the girls have really taken it over, it makes me really proud to see them put so much passion into something that they believe in.

- [Kurtis] In Bryan County, I'm Kurtis Hair.

- Now to the politics of 4-H, if you will.

Here's some highlights from 4-H Day at the Capitol from 2019, featuring a then new governor, Kevin Stitt.

(upbeat music) - You know, I just think it's a fantastic organization.

Teach discipline, hard work.

These are going to be our future leaders so it's important for me to be here to welcome them to the Capitol.

- So 4-H Day at the Capitol is a day that 4-H'ers from across the state come to the state Capitol and we meet our legislators.

We meet them for lunch.

We talk about our project areas, what we do in 4-H, and explain why 4-H is important.

- I know our members here in Oklahoma are very supportive of our 4-H students, but sometimes having that one-on-one dialogue with a 4-H'er from their particular county or their particular district, I know they certainly learn a lot about what our 4-H members are doing and it's a great time for us to highlight the caliber of individuals that we have in the 4-H program.

- Capital Day is extremely important to Oklahoma 4-H. To start out, it ensures ongoing support to the Oklahoma 4-H as well as educating those senators and legislators that might need to understand what Oklahoma 4-H is doing for the state, community, country, and world.

- 4-H is, I started when I was in school.

Did the projects, showed horses.

But one thing it teaches is responsibility.

It teaches kids responsibility.

I think that is the greatest gift that you can teach a young person.

- One of 4-H's main pillars is citizenship, and it shows kids how to be civically active and how to say engaged in their community.

- This organization shapes lives, teaches skills, and forms leaders from across this great state.

Let us show appreciation for the kids and the work that they do and the organization that they represent.

These truly are the future of our state and the best that Oklahoma has to offer.

Please help us recognize our Oklahoma 4-H members that are here with us today.

(audience applauding) - I've come to understand that the 4-H's are far more than a replication of one letter in the alphabet, but rather a whole lifestyle spanning from my head to my heart, to my hands and through my heel.

- Sitting in this room today are the next dreamers, innovators, and trailblazers.

The next moms and dads, the next teachers, businessmen, and voters.

The next responsible citizens of America.

Oklahoma 4-H is developing young adults who will become the catalyst for change to address the needs of an ever-changing and diverse society.

- A lot of students, a lot of young people, it affords them the opportunity to not only learn leadership skills but also learn community service.

- Well, just kind of to dream big.

Anything's possible in our state and I just love to inspire the young people of that.

(upbeat music) - As we leave you today, a nod toward the future of 4-H and the recent gift from the Masonic Charity Foundation of Oklahoma.

That group presented an $800,000 check to leaders of the Oklahoma 4-H Foundation.

Combined with earlier gifts, that brings the total to $1 million, all going to STEM related programs, including computer science, robotics, and hydroponics to name a few, as well as the annual 4-H Roundup on the OSU campus.

You can read the full story on our website at sunup.okstate.edu.

That'll do it for us this week.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We'll see you next time at SUNUP.

(relaxing music)