The 2022 Kentucky State Fair kicked off on Thursday, August 19 at the Kentucky Expo Center in Louisville. Over 800 youth from across the commonwealth traveled to Louisville to finish their 4-H Country Ham Project by giving a speech at the KY State Fair.  Pulaski County 4-H had 27 youth make the trip.  These 27 youth started the project in January when they placed their hams into cure at the Pulaski County Extension Office.  Each youth cures two hams and then only one of theirs hams will advance to the KY State Fair to compete against others from across the state.  Throughout the 8 months of the project, these 4-H youth have attended 4-H country ham and livestock meetings, traveled to UK to visit the Meat Sciences Lab, participated in the 4-H County Communications contest (some went on to win at the District and State level contests), and much more.  

While at the State Fair, our 4-H members presented a speech on the following two topics: Junior Division- The difference between dry cured country hams and a wet cured city hams and Senior Division- What is the economic and social impact country hams have on the Commonwealth of Kentucky?  Their scores at the State Fair are broken down by the following: 60% speech, 40% ham.  There are two additional divisions: Non-smoked and Smoked.  Pulaski County’s hams are in the non-smoked division.

We had several five Pulaski County 4-H Youth place in the top 3 in various divisions/categories, including one of those youth being the Senior Grand Champion (out of both non-smoked and smoked)!  We are very proud of all our youth and their accomplishments! Our country participants took home the following recognitions: 

Senior Grand Champion, Champion 03-04 Age Division, 1st Place Speech 03-04 Division (non-smocked), 1st Place Overall 03-04 Division (non-smoked), 1st Place Speech 2006 Division (non-smoked), 1st Place Overall 2006 Division (non-smoked), 3rd Place Speech 2010 Division (non-smoked), 3rd Place Overall 2010 Division (non-smoked), 3rd Place Speech 2012 Division (non-smoked), 3rd Place Non-Smoked Ham along with a total of 13 blue ribbons, 9 red ribbons, and 5 white ribbons.

Many youth made comments about the improvement they made on their public speaking abilities thanks to the project.  There were two youth who nearly forfeited the project because they did not want to give their speech at the state fair... Those two youth went on to receive a red ribbon at the state fair!