SAN LUIS VALLEY — CSU Extension believes every person from every walk of life can experience their healthiest, happiest, most productive life if they continually engage in lifelong learning. At SLV Area Extension, everything we do is designed to foster healthy youth and families, prosperous farms, ranches, and businesses, and strong, resilient, proud communities. We offer a myriad of educational opportunities to SLV citizens, where they live, work, and socialize. 

Here are a few things that have just happened and a few that are coming up: 

Our Agriculture education programming has been very active, and in the last few weeks, we taught a women in ag program called Annie's Project to 17 participants, an enterprise analysis and revegetation workshop with 26 participating, and an Ag family social in Saguache, which 33 people attended. Madeline Wilson, an Ag Production Systems Specialist, continues to work on revegetation of dried-up farm ground. She. She has just hired two summer interns who will work with her on both revegetation and alternative crop processing projects.  

Contact madeline.wilson@colostate.edu to receive the Zoom link and join our bi-weekly, open forum, revegetation group. She, along with Mollie Wells and Carol Gurule, 4-H Youth Development Specialists, and Janae Naranjo, our Family Consumer Science Specialist, are offering a small acreage, homesteading skills series in May. These will be presented in Antonito on May 3, Mosca on May 10, and San Luis on May 17. Mark your calendar now. Any person who attends all three sessions will be entered in a drawing for a dairy goat kid. 

4-H is really springing into action; we have several of our 4-H members traveling at the end of the month for two different leadership conferences. March 21-22 is the South-Central District Leadership Retreat in Kiowa. March 28-30 is the Youth Fest Leadership Camp in Pueblo. Sheep, goat, and hog tagging and weigh -in is May 3, and any members planning to participate in these projects should be selecting their animals very soon. Mollie, along with Cody Groff, 4-H Youth Development Specialist, will be teaching multiple sessions of our Meat Quality Assurance training, which teaches our members who raise livestock all about proper nutrition, health, veterinary care, safe pens and pastures, and generally how to be a good steward of their animals. 

Our senior livestock judging team and made up of Durae Naranjo, Emily Seger, Darian Vance, and Elena Escobido, and coached by Janae Naranjo from our office and Eric Hinton from Monte Vista Co-op, placed ninth out of 46 teams on Feb. 28 at a competition in Loveland. Durae placed ninth high point individual out of approximately 180 participants. Our junior team, made up of Ashley Entz, Rachel Seger, Syrie Tillman, and McKenna Shawcroft placed 17th out of 29 teams. The senior team will be competing in a major contest in west Texas the last weekend of March. 

If you think 4-H is only about animals, it is much more.  We have some 200 projects, including STEM, for members to choose from.  Our new member enrollment deadline is March 31st.  Please call our office and speak with one of our youth specialists to enroll your kids and grandkids before the deadline. 

Here's even more about our youth development work. Carol and Cody Groff, collaborating with other community partners, are currently teaching two Strengthening Families classes. One is in Center and the other in La Jara. These are free and are for parents and youth ages 10-14 to learn how to communicate better with one another, and their peers. They will begin two more of these classes in April. Participation is open to the public, and I encourage you to participate. 

Barbra Macias, our Saguache County Youth Program Coordinator, and Kallie Shawcroft, our ASU intern and Conejos County Youth Program Coordinator, are now delivering our Extension STEM education every week in the schools in their respective counties. The focus for March and April is understanding what's in soil, and entomology. 

Back to adult education, Janae Naranjo, Family Consumer Sciences Specialist, taught an online Cottage Foods class last week to 45 participants.  She is hosting an OLLI class featuring Temple Grandin on March 24.  It will be from 10:00 a.m. to noon, and you can participate at Alamosa Senior Center, Creede Community Church, Saguache Senior Center, or our office.  Call 719-852-7381 for more details, and don't miss this chance to hear from Dr. Grandin.  

Janae is also presenting her weekly classes on "A Hope Centered Life". This is a new curriculum Janae developed. It is designed for people of all ages and is open to the public. The classes are from 10:00 am to noon on March 31, April 7, and April 14 at the Tri-County Senior Center in Monte Vista. She teaches Serve Safe classes April 14 in Monte Vista and April 23 in Creede. Janae is also working on the first annual SLV Celebrating Aging Conference, which will be held on May 9, 2025, at Ski Hi. Here is a taste of some of the topics for that day: Finding Joy In Aging; Rewards and Positive Experiences of Family Caregivers; Healthy Aging-Thriving in Later Life; and Beyond Tomorrow: A Guide to Advanced Directives and Thoughtful Farewells. 

And for all you generous givers out there, please remember our cause when you can donate. We continue to build an endowment fund so that we can make Mollie's position permanent.  

Please join us and become a part of CSU Extension! To learn more about any of these events and opportunities, call Jennifer Vandiver or Sara Seger at our office, 719-852-7381. They are the wranglers who keep all this going for us.