Sanguine Tenacious Tidings

Volunteering

Write about a community service or volunteer experience you’ve had in your life that made an impact on you.

Every one made some kind of impact. I liked them all.

I taught a women's bible study. I liked doing this because it kept me studying. There is a time spread in today's blog of 1976-1993 give or take a few years?

I helped in a Thanksgiving outreach to people, who did not have a family or friends to have Thanksgiving with. After it got started I was surprised how many people were in need of just a friendly place to celebrate Thanksgiving.

I worked with an outreach to a town's young people in an after school entertainment. It was in the basement of a large church, because the place was available for a time. There was a drug problem in the town among young people. Even though this closed after I left, it reopened later in the town hall for a period of time. I put in a few hours of time there just as a helper for awhile.

I learned a lot from a different group, who had an outreach to young males, who were selling drugs in the same town. The other outreach group came to our group and gave a program about problems with drug addiction in young people.

K and I were PTA president for a very short time.

One year, I took in some inner city children for two week vacations. It was so they could experience country life? This was also when the boys were younger.

When the boys were young I was a cub scout leader.

Some of my children raised Goats and were in Dairy goat 4 H. It was a lot of fun. I always attended the meetings and the women who was the leader arranged a lot of presentations. We visited lots of actually goat dairy farms and other 4 H enterprises.

All these efforts were at a time when the rural society did not even believe there was a drug problem in the small surrounding areas. Most of the towns and churches were small congregations. The people were close knit and as the 80's and 90's approached still thought progress was not going to impact them much. In the last 20 to 30 years the impact really hit. Farmer's children growing up in the school systems learned and took jobs in other industries.

Large dairy farms in the area did not survive children leaving for work in other parts of the country. A lot of the farming done now is on 10 to 50 acres. A lot of hay is done in round bales. Horse farmers find themselves looking at prices of $5 - $7 a bale for hay. Horses prices soared in the 90's. A good quarter horse going for $1500 in the 80's was now $5000 by the end of the 90's. When the market would not take the price jump the horses were dumped because of feed prices into the market and sold for meat to animal food companies. Beef had it's own problems when disease hit.

Now you can find horse rescue places trying to save and place horses that should have been good companion animals for families.

There are still a few large dairy enterprises around. There are more dairy goat places, than there use to be and prices for a good dairy goat have soared in the last several years.

I look back and wonder where it will all end. The USA still needs a base of farming enterprise. I can see different crop options as people, who use to buy milk switch to soy milk, almond milk, and oat milk.

Now I've wandered off topic. Volunteer work was part of my social education. I wasn't always good at the job but, I was available because I was a stay at home mom, when other mom's were working to earn more for the family. I treasure the times when my children were growing up. Still, I can see more knowledge as a young mother would have helped my children's own time of growth. Volunteering is helpful but, monetarily does not help the family grow.

See Ya!