Penn State Extension holds annual dinner
The Penn State Extension Jefferson County office held its first in-person annual meeting on Monday, recognizing various volunteers in the county, as well as listening to a presentation from Pennsylvania Game Commission Chronic Wasting Disease biologist Andrea Korman.
Client Relations Manager for Area 2 Rob Dickinson gave the opening remarks, giving a brief overview of what the Extension Office is up to in the county. He said that Area 2, which contains Warren, McKean, Potter, Forest, Elk, Cameron, Clarion, Jefferson and Clearfield counties, has returned to in- person programming since Jan. 1 and has done over 50 in-person workshops. He said they have reached 141 residents of the county in webinars. He said the largest webinar attendance was for the Forest Landowner Conference, which hosted people from all over the world. He also mentioned solar leasing, Garden Hotline Live and the Mental Wellness series. He spoke on behalf of Amanda Kanouff, 4- H youth development educator, and said she will have the Ag Progressive Safety Days on May 12, which will host students from Brookville Area School District, Punxsutawney Christian School, SS. C. D., and will perform an event for the Punxsutawney Area School District in-house on May 19. He said he had attended before and was very impressed.
“Every kid in Jefferson County was there. I went through the work stations and I learned something,” Dickinson said.
He said there are 42 educators and administrators, and said they are known to collaborate to solve problems and get things done. He listed some new programming coming down the pike, including a Master Watershed Steward program, which has been traditionally in the lower part of the state; a canning class produced by the new master food preserver for Clarion, Jefferson, Venango and Forest counties; and a new nutrition education Aadvisor for Clearfield and Jefferson counties.
He said there are seven program areas in the College of Ag and Extension at the university level. He said the College of Ag priorities are animal and human husbandry, invasive species, water quality, dairy and workforce development.
Rick Kralj, food safety and quality educator, was up next. Kralj said he is engaged in regulatory training, offering training for the retail sector and restaurants to gain their food serving and safety certifications, which are required by law. The curriculum they use is valid nationwide. In addition to those services, he said they offer a cooking for crowds class, which allows volunteer organizations to learn the basics of food safety at little cost. He said he does work for food manufacturing across the state, driven by USDA and FDA certification requirements. He said a horticulture team works with produce growers, which require certification for selling their goods on the wholesale market. The training covers good agricultural practices, food safety on the farm and what is needed to be done to get their produce sold wholesale.
He said he fields questions for new businesses
on topics relating to regulatory needs of getting food products onto store shelves.
He said the home food preservation programming is vital to combat misinformation in the public regarding food preservation at home.
Danielle Rhea, water resources coordinator, spoke on some of the services she handles. She said the hallmark program they provide is the private drinking water program. The program educates people with private water supplies on the importance of testing their drinking water and ways to treat it if there is an issue. She said the extension has been writing grants in order to fund other such programs, as well as provide free water testing to residents.
She said another long-standing program was their pond management program. She said ponds are a popular landscape feature in the state, with over 100,000 ponds in Pennsylvania. She said once people have a pond, they find there can be numerous problems. She said they field questions on algae, plants, fish kills and areas. She said they plan to host more in- person programs in the future, including twilight pond walks for later in the summer. She said stream restoration is another area which comes up frequently, with the team launching a back- yard stream repair webinar series. She said they are doing some research-focused themes, including programs on planting trees along stream beds and how it helps the streams. She said there is a team that educates farmers about water quality and the public on what farmers do for water quality.
Cheryl Shenkle, Master Gardener coordinator, spoke on what programs she oversees. She said she wants to get more people to take advantage of the services they provide.
Finally, associate director of client relations Tara Mondock spoke. She said thanked the commissioners for spending the day with the extension several weeks ago as part of the “Day in the County” exercise, which is being done in every county in Pennsylvania. Its purpose is to reconnecting leadership in State College and local extension leaders with the county in order to find better program connections, problems created by Covid that extension programming can solve.
“If you know of folks in your community that want to get engaged with the extension, we encourage you to share this information with family, friends, and other partners in the community that you’d think would be good partners to us,” Mondock said.
Dickinson recognized the various volunteers involved with the extension. Extension Council members recognized were: Jim Berry, chair; Sally Hall, vice chair; Chris Wolfe, secretary; Herb Bullers, county commissioner; Suella Himes; and Bob Schimdt. Master Gardener volunteers include: John Huot, Karen Reed and Pamela Henderson. Renee Stiver was the 4-H leader who was recognized. Extension staff recognized included: Pamela Passmore, administrative assistant, Rick Kralj, food safety and quality educator; Danielle Rhea, water resources educator; Cheryl Shenkle, Master Gardener coordinator; and Amanda Kanouff, 4-H youth development educator.