2006 State Awards

Alleghany County
State ESP County Performance Award

Farm Safety day for Alleghany and Ashe High School students and a separate day for Alleghany 4^th grade: Bryan did chain saw safety, George did ATV safety, and Sherrie did sun safety. The office arranged for the “smoke house” for fire safety and ordered and delivered 10 fire extinguishers for the fire safety station. George also did farm equipment, and Sherrie did bicycle safety.

County Health Fair: A day-long health fair at the county wellness center was held. Sherrie arranged it and the county manager allowed employees time off to attend. David manned the Body Mass Index station and George had the Avian Flu station. The staff was involved in preparing food, getting volunteers, and arranging the space and schedule.

County Agricultural Fair: Our fair is truly a county fair. County employees manage it with volunteer help. We have eight livestock shows, George worked six of them. Sherrie, Sara and Michele managed the exhibit hall; Michele works the demolition derby and the lawn mowers race. David and George help at the derby and lawn mower race as well. Sherrie also works with the carnival. Funds from the carnival, derby and lawn mower race are used to pay the livestock and exhibit hall premiums.

Team Retreat: Our staff also plans a team retreat. This year we invited the Wilkes county staff to join us. We had county stops at a quarter horse farm, Christmas tree farm, trout farm, a pottery and we included a stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Our lunch was catered by Extension and Community Association clubs, and we had our lunch and meeting in the Cattle Show Barn at Bitter Sweet Farm. Mitch Owen from POD gave a presentation about communication skills and understanding each other.

Summer Fun 4-H: 4-H offered 13 summer fun activities to Alleghany youth. The activities focused on the project curriculum areas. Seventy-five percent of the parents noted that the educational value of the activities expanded their children's horizons. Sara, David, Bryan, George Michele and Sherrie all were involved in providing leadership for the activities.

 Resource Utilization:
Our office has four agents, one technician, one secretary and one part-time secretary, yet we have many of the programs counties with larger staffs have. We rely on specialists and other resources to keep our programs going. The FCS agent relies heavily on the state staff to provide programs ready to take to the public, and the state office does a great job with that. Christmas tree, beef, horse and other specialists are often in the county helping with programming. Bee keepers form other counties are used to help conduct programs for local bee keepers. Our office teams with banks, park rangers, Emergency Management, and other resource people to help deliver our programs. We often use other buildings (community college and the electric cooperative) as meeting places, a much-needed resource in our office.

Program Impact:
A county cattle association was formed this year, maybe the first time ever in Alleghany County. Members are able to order minerals together and get a discount because of the volume. Through the health fair, employees were able to attend cholesterol, skin cancer, blood sugar and other screenings. Follow up visits with doctors have been planned. All fourth-grade students and all of the agricultural students in high school attended farm safety days.