GLENVIEW, Ill. – The 4-H Club of Glenview Public School District 34 has around 30 members, all of whom exhibit livestock or poultry at area fairs and competitions. What makes this club – known as the Clovers – exceptional is that none of the members of the Chicago collar community were raised with an agricultural background.

Many of them had never seen an actual working farm before joining the club, according to Blake Lanphier, Clovers 4-H Club adviser and manager of Historic Wagner Farm, where the club meets year-round.

“We have almost 20 lambs, 10 hogs and 11 dairy heifers to be shown this year. Teaching the next generation about agriculture is really one of my biggest jobs here at Wagner Historic Farm,” said Lanphier, who has overseen daily farm production, maintenance and the 4-H club for the 18.5-acre, park district-owned farm/living museum since 2016. “The kids are all suburban, ages 8-18 years old. We’ve got some members in their last year who are now well-versed in agriculture after going through our program.

“We’ve now had a number of kids go off to college majoring in animal science. One girl I taught is now getting her master’s in bovine reproduction. I am a farmer who grows crops, but the greatest crop I grow is the kids who leave here knowing agriculture and where their food comes from.”

Lanphier makes sure his 4-H students have a well-rounded education on the business side of agriculture by organizing field trips to major farm shows such as the Beef Expo.

“When we travel people are very surprised when they find out where the kids are from,” he said. “We’ve got these students taking care of animals, doing chores and everything else a kid growing up on a farm would be doing.”

In the summer, Lanphier offers optional training classes to his students twice a week. They work the hogs, lambs and cattle to improve their showmanship skills and relationships with the animals.

“We also do a lot of knowledge-based stuff, learning about anatomy, physiology and diets of these animals,” said Lanphier, who grew up in rural Iowa as an FFA member. In addition, once a year the Clovers host a lamb, hog, dairy and beef stock show (this year’s event is June 10) at Wagner Historic Farm. The club also shows at the Lake County Fair and an annual area 4-H Open contest.

“The kids learn to do all the clipping and grooming necessary to get the animals ready for the shows. I get in and help but mostly I am watching and observing in support,” Lanphier said.

Meghan Czerwinski, 18, is one of just five of the 4,000 or so students enrolled in the New Trier, Ill., school system to participate in 4-H activities. A number of her fellow students in the northern Chicago collar area with similar public school experiences comprise the makeup of the Glenview Clovers 4-H club.

“We are the only agriculture-based 4-H club within Cook County,” said Jennifer Czwerinski, Meghan’s mom and a charter member of the Glenview Clovers who now volunteers for the club. To Jennifer, who was raised on a northern Wisconsin dairy farm, enrolling Meghan in the Clovers at age 8 was an important rite of passage for her daughter.

“I’ve grown up at Glenview Farms. I loved being there and I loved the animals. This has felt like the natural next step in my growing up,” Meghan said.

Volunteering at Wagner Farm when Meghan was a small child caused Czerwinski and a few others to consider bringing a 4-H club onto the grounds, which was purchased to be preserved as a living history farm by the Glenview Park District in 2000. “The idea took off and exploded,” Jennifer said. “We now have a very strong base of kids in our club and actually have a fairly decent waiting list to join the club.”

When the fledgling club got off the ground there were just 10 Glenview Clovers members. The only animals shown in competitions were chickens. Club members took home the chicks from Wagner Farm and raised them in their suburban homes. Lacking a Cook County agricultural fair, the club invited a poultry expert to visit the farm and judge the club’s chickens.

“It was so much fun, we realized that we had to come up with a way to participate in a county fair. We reached out to the next county north of us, Lake County, which still has a few farms left. We petitioned the Illinois Extension to allow us to participate in the Lake County Fair, and we’ve been participating there for the last 12 years or so,” Jennifer explained.

When school comes to an end with the termination of the spring semester, Meghan will be wrapping up her decade-long experience as a Glenview Clover member and graduating from New Trier High School. The lifelong “city girl” will have plenty of fond memories to take along with her.

“I was in my second year (of 4-H) and 9 years old when I got my first lamb, Larry, and he turned out to be a jumper. So, I was this little 9-year-old girl with this giant, jumping lamb. I remember spending that year trying to figure out how to get this lamb to follow me around, and learning how to bond with the lamb. That was definitely a big year for me in learning how to interact and get to know lambs,” said Meghan, who eventually switched to dairy competitions and won “a couple” of ribbons.

Years of work refining the showmanship aspect of 4-H competitions will be one of the skills Meghan will retain and use in everyday life, according to the graduating senior. “In the future, it will be very similar in how I present myself to other people. Going into a job interview and understanding people are paying attention to how you look, how you talk and how you engage with what they’re saying, what your plans are for the future – these are all things (judges) looked at in 4-H competitions that can be applied later in life,” said Meghan, who will leave for North Carolina University this fall to major in animal science.

“My major has everything to do with my time in 4-H at Wagner Farm,” she noted. “Some of my closest friends are current and past 4-Hers. They still come back and spend time at the farm. Even as I move on and graduate, I’ll always come back home to the farm to see what’s going on. There are opportunities to come back and help future 4-Hers, and I’ll be taking advantage of those.”

Jennifer said she was “amazed” by her daughter’s maturity and focus on her goals, which were developed and refined during her years as a member of the Glenview Clovers and time spent at Historic Wagner Farm.

To learn more about Historic Wagner Farm, visit www.glenviewparks.org/facilities/historic-wagner-farm/.