116-Uncutar Fanning, Saturday, March 15,1986
This 'Shepherd of the Veer' isn't sheepish anymore
BY JACK RUBLEY
LANDISVILLE - Ellen Lewis just
wanted a sheep for a pet. That was
in 1960.
Five years later, “a sheep” has
become a breeding flock of 25
Hampshire ewes with, at last
count, 30 lambs.
On the family’s five-acre far
mette near Landisville there’s a
new 44-by-40 sheep bam.
Anchoring the fireplace hearth is
a silver trophy proclaiming Ellen
the Lancaster 4-H Woolies’
The ewe that started it all: Annabelle, Ellen Lewis's first
show prospect, has dropped out of the limelight to produce
more prize winning lambs for the Lewis flock.
BY SUZANNE KEENE
LANCASTER - As the late
afternoon sunlight filters through
the frosted windows of the Lan
caster girl’s club, a group of 4-
H’ers listens as 4-H agent Zoann
Parker describes the essential
ingredients plants need to grow.
Later in the meeting, they will
carefully tuck cuttings of Wan
dering Jew and piggyback plants
into soil-filled Styrofoam cups.
And, amid considerable ex
citement, they will wrap their
newly-planted treasures carefully
in newspaper to take home.
While this may sound like a
routine 4-H meeting, it isn’t. The
youngsters are not the typical
farm kids usually associated with
4-H; they are city children who had
never seen seeds or transplanted a
plant until they started attending 4-
H meetings.
4 *
Mei
s of a city 4-H
flunk ft 4-H,
‘Shepherd of the Year. ’
There’s also a large cardboard
carton overflowing with newpaper
clippings and a rainbow of show
ribbons. When Ellen Lewis does
something, she does it right.
Which, in the terminology of
livestock producers, seems to be a
heritable trait.
Although Ellen’s father, George
Lewis, had no previous experience
with sheep, he is a veteran of the 4-
H program. While growing up in
New York State, George parlayed
CHy dub swims
This city 4-H club is the brain
child of Lancaster Extension 4-H
Agent Zoann Parker, who says,
“I’d drive by and see these kids
sitting around with nothing to do.”
So, with characteristic energy
and enthusiasm, Zoann announced
that a new 4-H club would be
meeting in the girl’s club and in
vited the kids to join.
When no one showed for the first
meeting, Zoann refused to be
discouraged. She picked up the
goldfish that were to be the club’s
first project and walked around the
girl’s club asking if anyone was
interested in obtaining one of the
shiny fish.
Before too long, she had at
tracted enough kids to start a
meeting, and the city club was off
to a shaky beginning.
The idea behind the goldfish
project, which Zoann wrote her-
, hifc- • 4 , )ty 4-H Agent Zoann Parker shows a 4-H'er
. . - »4 V l6 t,n y r °ots forming at the end of a cutting of Wanderine
rate on getting their plants off to a good start. Jew at a recent meeting of her city club 8 anoermg
ib concent
an interest in poultry into some
successful 4-H projects. His career
undoubtedly peaked in the late
1940’5, when his rooster placed
first in the Madison Square Garden
poultry show. “He won a powerful
big prize of $3,” George chuckles.
So when Ellen decided that she
wanted to have a sheep, Dad
decided that she ought to do it
Lewis-fashion.
To start out in the right direc
tion, Ellen and her father spent
some time with well-known
Lancaster County Hampshire
breeders, Clyde and Dorothy
Brubaker, who live nearby. “One
Sunday we went over there and we
talked all afternoon,” Ellen
recalls. “I remember him (Clyde)
telling me that all you need to do is
feed them right and give them
someTLC.”
Ellen joined the Woolies in 1980,
the first year that the club
separated from the county beef
club. It was not until the following
year that she entered show com
petition and found out that success
in the showring depended on her
fitting ability, in addition to feed
andTLC.
She estimates that it takes about
three hours of trimming to ready a
sheep for the ring. That’s in ad
dition to the hour required to wash
and dry, the sheep which, “is a
good way to use all your old bath
towels,” she notes.
Since kicking off her show career
in 1981, Ellen’s combination of
fitting, food and TLC has proven to
be a winning formula. Her first
show sheep, a Hampshire ewe
purchased from the Brubakers, got
off to a strong start by taking top
honors in the 1981 Manheim Fair,
then going on to be named
champion breeding sheep at the
info 4~H with
self, was to keep the kids coming
back week after week. Through
earlier experiences, Zoann had
learned that attendance was often
spotty at cily club meetings. To
encourage regular attendance, she
would distribute only one week’s
worth of goldfish food at each
meeting. To get the next week’s
supply, the 4-H’ers had to attend
the meeting.
In her search for a project to
start the club, Zoann relied on her
experiences as a 4-H’er. “I’ve
always loved animals and that’s
how I learned responsibility.”
Knowing the limited resources she
had to work with and the en
vironment the animal would be
exposed to, Zoann turned to fish.
In order to obtain a goldfish, the
4-H’er had to attend three
meetings. When this requirement
was fulfilled, she was presented
--** 1 *f x >
%
county roundup. Annabelle
finished the show season in
characteristic style by taking
reserve champion Hampshire ewe
honors at the 1982 Farm Show.
In addition to maintaining an
ambitious show schedule, Ellen’s
famous ewe starred on the local
television station’s program,
“Rise and Shine,” and joined the
cast of a church Christmas
musical. “That sheep acted just
like an old ham,” recalls Ellen’s
mother, Lorraine. “Ellen used to
take her out without a lead and
she’d be six inches from her hip
pocket.”
In fact, in those early years,
goldfish project
with a quart jar bearing one
goldfish and a week’s supply of
food.
Most of the fish died in a short
time, Zoann reports. “When you
put goldfish in a quart jar, they
don’t live very long.” But early
death was expected and she had
warned the 4-H’ers that the fish
wouldn’t last long. “There was no
pretense that they were going to
live until they were 60,” she said.
With the club established and the
goldfish project behind them, the 4-
H’ers moved on to other short-term
projects like money management
and plant cultivation.
Providing the kids with
something tangible to take home
every week has been important to
maintaining membership, Zoann
notes. For one project, the club
looked at ways they could improve
When you happen to be the smallest lamb in a competitive
set of Hampshire triplets, you've got to take a meal wherever
you can find it. Four-day-old Pee Wee isn’t complaining.
Ellen confesses that she was much
more sheepish than her sheep.
“When I first went into 4-H I was
really shy,” she says, pointing out
that the 4-H program has been
responsible for helping her to
overcome her inability to talk to
people, which, in turn, has resulted
in many new friendships. Ellen
also credits 4-H with helping her to
develop the self-discipline
necessary to properly care for
livestock.
Although her breeding sheep
projects have spanned five years,
it wasn’t until last year that Ellen
took on a market lamb project. “I
(Turn to Page B 17)
their home environment, then
made '“garbage” cans out of
plastic buckets covered with
contact paper.
As part of the money
management project, the 4-H’ers
made banks and are working at
saving |3 to attend the 4-H Fair this
summer. So far, her plan has
worked and for the most part, the
kids have been coming back.
Club member Tracy Dean said
the reason she continues to attend
meeting is “because it’s fun.” Her
favorite 4-H activity so far, she
reports, was a trip to a nearby
greenhouse.
Fellow 4-H’er Shanda Lee, 8,
agrees that the club is a lot of fun.
Shanda says she learned about the
club by watching a meeting and
decided it was something she
would enjoy.
(Turn to Page B 17)