Things are always busy at the local extension office and this time of year is no exception. Last week I attended the Turf Grass Field Day in Griffin. This is a good chance to see a multitude of test plots and visit with our specialists.

The rest of my week and weekend was spent at the Southern Regional Horse Show in Perry. Most folks know that my expertise is with showing beef cattle and the smaller species, but it was amazing to work this major 4-H Horse Show event. Youth from as far west as Oklahoma and from as far north as Virginia and Kentucky were on hand at the Georgia National Fairgrounds to compete with the Georgia 4-H’ers.

It was educational to see the skill level of these equine project based 4-H youth. I think the fairground sign said it was nine weeks before our big fall fair at the fairgrounds.

We will have a lot of our own 4-H’ers at the Georgia National showing steers, heifers, market lambs and meat goats.

This week I will be playing some major catching up on site visits, emails and phone calls. There are some things that I wanted to remind readers about that will be coming up locally. My wife is a school teacher and she is diligently getting ready to see her new students.

My daughters will be soon starting a new school year like many of your younger ones. We have a high school freshman this year, but that is another story. She is excited, but I don’t know how dad feels about it.

I would like to remind everyone and hope your young person will consider participating in 4-H this year. Young people between the ages of 9-19 or grades 5-12 can join our club. 4-H is the youth development club of the University of Georgia.

Currently, we have no membership dues. Ms. Becky and Mr. Kurt will soon be setting up their school visits. One misconception about 4-H is that it is an “Ag Club”. True, agriculture is our roots. True, Gordon 4-H is one of the top agriculture based clubs around, but that is not all we do. We try to be very active in community service and try to help youth become better leaders.

A young person can learn to be a better public speaker, learn how to make educated decisions, learn responsibility and other important life skills by participating in 4-H.

Stop by or give us a call to see how we have a place for your child in Gordon 4-H. You may be surprised about all the areas we cover and our variety of activities.

August is a great time to make plans for your fall outdoor activities or even make plans for next year. Soil sampling will be a great place to start. You can soil sample basically any time of year, but many folks at the end of a vegetable growing season will send in a soil sample to help in making a plan for 2013.

Maybe the garden did not do so well and you want to make sure it was not a nutrient or pH issue. Soil sampling now would also be good for the person that wants to replant a fescue lawn or even someone that wants to plant some cool season grasses in pasture. To send a soil sample out of our office to the UGA Lab, it costs $9 per sample. The information you will receive makes that cost very affordable.

When you go to buy fertilizer or lime without the data from a properly taken soil sample, you are just guessing on what you need. True, you can get a solid nutritional or liming recommendation from a researched based publication such as ours, but nothing can replace knowing exactly what your piece of land needs to grow that particular crop or item.

You can use a soil sample as a tool in getting better performance. You may have noticed I said a properly taken soil sample. The official soil sample bag will have directions on the back including soil depths for what you are sampling.

We have a publication that will clearly cover the steps. You can email or call me and I can tell you the steps also. Information normally gets back from the lab in about five working days. Just make sure you took the samples correctly before you bring to the office. For more information contact Gordon County Extension at 706-629-8685 or email gbowman@uga.edu.