Why state fair?  As I think of the past year and am really trying to have a more successful year this year, I think of what all my 4-H members did for the past year and how that was recognized at the Kentucky State Fair.   By working hard and having entries in so many different areas and seeing how these project areas has contributed to their life style and has become a lifelong learning project for them, I am convinced that the time spent is valuable.  Of the seven areas that we teach in our program, we sent items to the state fair in SET (Electricity- 2 class champions and the grand champion),  Family and Consumer Sciences (Baking, canning, sewing, home environment, item for the home and cake decorating ( class champion in cupcake and grand champion in 4-H cake, class champion in wastebasket decoration), Natural Resources (wood science, horticulture, gardening), Communications and the Arts (Resume writing, country ham speeches, invitation and thank you note, visual arts won grand champion with his tire print), Leadership (entrepreneur sold items), Animal Science (members showed sheep, goats, country ham and beef).  The only area that was not entered was Health.  I always enter over 100 items where the members receive so many blue ribbons with a few red and white sprinkled in.  Once the ribbons are given to the members, they immediately look at their score sheets so they can improve for the next year.  All of the hours of teaching, meeting, tagging and entering the members work is so worth it.