(From left to right) Treasurer Curt Wilson, President Alex Durst, board member and youth committee member Steven Hameister, Vice President Jim Calvert, and Secretary Heath Blomquist.

Guthrie County Farm Bureau’s member appreciation picnic is one of many annual events that won’t be held during the Guthrie County Fair due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but that didn’t stop them from showing their support to the area youth that are involved.

The Farm Bureau Board of Directors decided to take the funds they’d usually spend for summer parades and the picnic and rounded it up to $2,000 to give to the Guthrie County 4-H and FFA Youth Committee. Farm Bureau Board President Jim Calvert says much of the funds’ use will be determined by Extension 4-H and Youth Coordinator Mollie Clark, “A lot of this might be (for) whatever Mollie does for programming, sending kids to camps, and kind of whatever she thinks the Youth Committee think they need to spend money on. We didn’t put any stipulation on it but just to make sure the programming keeps going because they probably lost $5-6,000 in food stand funds so we just didn’t want the 4-H kids to run short on money that they’ll do some things that we’ve always done with Extension.”

The 4-H food stand will not be open this year because of restrictions set by ISU Extension and Outreach during the current pandemic. Raccoon Valley Radio will be broadcasting live each day of the fair from the Big Red Radio, and you can hear more about the fair from Fair Board President Tyler Carney during today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County program on air and at raccoonvalleyradio.com.