Memories of 4-H Camp, Home Demonstration Work, and the County Agent

When you pack to send your child off to summer camp, you probably won’t include a live chicken or a pound of butter. And you probably won’t expect that part of your child’s week at camp will include preparing her meals. Or that she will be carried to camp in the back of a truck. But that’s what Carlyn Bernhardt remembers about 4-H camp in the 1930s.

To learn more about life in rural North Carolina, read the following interview with the former 4-H’er, and retired agriculture and home economics agents. The article by Lynn Earley Roberson was published in the May 7, 1989 issue of The Salisbury Post in honor of the Extension Service’s 75^th anniversary.

When Carlyn Bernhardt and other Rowan County youngsters headed to 4-H camp in Swannanoa in the 1930s, each carried crucial items.

In addition to clothing, blankets and comfortable shoes, each child’s provisions included:

·         a pound of butter,

·         two pounds fresh string beans,

·         a firm cabbage head,

·         A dozen tomatoes,

·         One dozen apples, and

·         A live chicken.

“We went up on an open-bed truck,” Mrs. Bernhardt says. While the young people sang songs from their benches in the truck, their provisions bounced along on another truck. Once at the camp, each day’s events including fixing the food.

Mrs. Bernhardt plans to share that bit of nostalgia and other tidbits at a dinner on Monday, in recognition of the 75^th birthday of the Agricultural Extension Service.

Mrs. Bernhardt, who in 1936 was the first Rowan County 4-H’er ever tapped for the state 4-H Honor Club; retired Agricultural Extension Service agent P.H. Satterwhite; and retired home extension agent Edith Hinshaw will be guest speakers at the 7 p.m. dinner at the Agricultural Center on Old Concord Road.

Cooperative Extension began across the nation on May 8, 1914, with the signing by President Woodrow Wilson of the Smith-Lever Act. The act created a partnership of local, state and federal government to spread information on agriculture and home economics.

Although much has changed through the years, Extension’s purpose has remained the same.

“The philosophy behind the whole thing was to teach by means of instruction and demonstration and illustration more scientific things that had been developed,” says Satterwhite, who turns 90 in a few months.

For Mrs. Bernhardt, 4-H taught her leadership and brought her joy. “My sisters and brothers and I look back on those times and think of them as the best days of our lives. 4-H club has always held a special place in my heart.”

They saw 4-H as fellowship and a learning experience. For 50 years, she has treasured a lion she received from Mrs. Frank McRae, a local leader, for her good work. The lion signified strength and leadership, she says, and has occupied an honored spot over her fireplace.

‘Finer Things of Life’

As a teenager in the 1930s, Mrs. Bernhardt wrote of 4-H in her scrapbook, “It builds men and women out of farm boys and girls.” It taught better agriculture and the finer things of life, she says.

Her involvement in 4-H began in 1932 when she joined the Granite Quarry club, of which she was president in 1934. She was the first president of the Saint Paul’s 4-H Club and served in countywide offices.

For Miss Hinshaw, the Extension Service offered a career opportunity. When she decided to switch from her job as a hospital dietitian in 1945, Extension Service employees must have worked or lived on a farm. When they asked about her farm experience, she said, “Why yes, I suckered tobacco for half a day.”

Help was scarce because of World War II, so she was hired despite her lack of farm experience. She worked with the Stanly County extension service for eight years and for four years at what is now UNC-Greensboro.

She then came to Rowan County with the extension service. Because of her ties to Stanly County, and the family relationships between Stanly and Rowan County people, “I never did feel like a stranger,” Miss Hinshaw says.

Extension offices then were crowded and stuck away in basements or third floors, she says. Now, they often are modern and spacious. When she held meetings in Stanly County, trucks grinding by on the highway interrupted the meetings. In Salisbury, trains did the same.

For Rural Women

“Back then, the clubs were for rural women, because it was started to help the farmers,” she says. Sometimes, Salisbury women would join the nearby rural clubs, and after World War II, the clubs opened to city and county residents.

The clubs and church provided the social and educational part of women’s lives, Miss Hinshaw says. Many had no cars or one car, which their husbands used. “As I went to clubs, I would stop as I went along and pick them up,” she says.

Often the club members helped spread information and technology, Miss Hinshaw says. “When something new came in, like when the bookmobile first started, they came to the clubs and asked them to find places for the bookmobile to start,” she says.

The club members also helped introduce Rowan Technical Institute and the Mental Health Center, as well as volunteering at the V.A. Medical Center and helping find sites for dumpsters.

The farm agents also encouraged farmers to try new methods and new crops. Satterwhite describes farmers’ reactions as good, bad and indifferent. “Some of them were so ‘sot’ in their ways,” he says, laughing.

“When I first started with Extension, there wasn’t much soil conservation,” Satterwhite says. Later, he began encouraging farmers to protect their soil from erosion.

He started with the extension service in 1940, after teaching agriculture in the high school at Cleveland School. When he first started working, he did a lot of veterinarian work because there was no vet.

He spent most of his time with farmers in the fields, stopping by his office occasionally to check his mail. Each farmer kept a few milk cows and a flock of chickens. “If you see one now, you stop and look at them,” Satterwhite says.

Satterwhite counts among his achievements his help in forming a dairy cooperative, which later merged with a larger organization. Now, farming has grown more specialized, he says.

Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham, who Satterwhite had taught at Cleveland, presented Satterwhite with a plaque on Feb. 13, honoring him for his faithful and outstanding contributions to agriculture in Rowan Count y and North Carolina.