Raising and training animals. Growing food. Fishing. Archery. Sewing clothes. Making preserves. These are some of the skills that humanity is going to need if one of the many fictional post-apocalypse narratives ends up coming true.
Growing up in rural Ohio, I developed some of those skills by participating in 4-H, the network of youth development organizations whose roots (in Ohio, coincidentally) date to 1902. Recently, I paid a nostalgic visit to my childhood county fair, and it was while strolling the various barns occupied by 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America) projects that my brain connected this wholesome form of learning to grim scenes from “The Last of Us.”
Both groups provide hands-on learning in agriculture, science and technology, healthy lifestyle practices, and civic engagement. So if your post-apocalypse gardener comes out of one of these clubs, you can be confident that they haven’t just read a book about raising vegetables — they have put trowel to soil and grown some. Your shepherd (because I’m guessing the sheep and goats will survive longer than the cows and pigs) probably had been present for the birth of a lamb, knows their way around shearing season, and maybe can wield a pair of knitting needles (or pass the spun wool to someone who was in a 4-H knitting club). If horsewoman Kirsten in HBO’s “Station Eleven” had been a 4-H’er before a flu pandemic wiped out civilization, she would know things like not letting the horses graze near wild cherry or black walnut trees — and she would recognize those trees. She might even be able to hitch a horse to a cart or plow.
At the fair, I grew misty-eyed thinking back on summers showing my horses, whose care I shared with one of my brothers. Our parents had initially resisted our equine interest, born from YMCA day-camp excursions to a local barn. But as our pestering increased, they relented and said we could get a horse of our own — if my brother and I fixed up our old sheep barn, fenced in a pasture and accumulated enough savings from chores, odd jobs and birthday and holiday cash to buy one and pay for its upkeep. I was 9, and my brother was 15 — and yes, our parents were surprised when we checked all those boxes.
We bought a 12-year-old American Paint mare from a local family and showed her as a 4-H project for several years. Eventually, I acquired another horse and worked with more from neighboring stables. I started out riding western style but later traded my chaps for breeches to learn dressage and jumping. Training a draft pony gave me the opportunity to learn how to drive a cart.
It wasn’t just about competition: 4-H taught you horse health and maintenance, training skills and general equine knowledge. You had to complete a project book and pass a test each year to get the sweet rewards of fair week.
We won some ribbons, even a few trophies, but we also learned valuable lessons of disappointment and failure. No matter how many hours you’d spent in the saddle and barn, when fair week came around, sometimes your horse (or you) couldn’t handle the heat or the unfamiliar environment of the fairgrounds, and you just weren’t your best in the ring. I don’t know about you, but I prefer people who know how to elegantly cope with disappointment. They won’t give up in the first post-apocalyptic year that the potatoes don’t grow or the chickens don’t lay. Maybe the search for a home for humanity in “Interstellar” would have gone better if Matt Damon’s Dr. Mann had accepted his ice planet’s failure without trying to sabotage other options.
And more than disappointment: In 4-H, you learn about death. While I was studying how to poultice hoofs and identify tack, my peers in other clubs were raising animals for more utilitarian purposes. Immaculate plush-coated steers, inquisitive pigs, enormous complacent turkeys were raised from birth to be judged at the fair and then sold to the highest bidder for consumption. We’d often see tears during the final separation; 4-H’ers are children — not monsters ― many of whom put their sale earnings toward college tuition. But still, lesson learned. It’s takes a certain type of kid to send a creature they fed with a bottle or saw hatched from an egg to someone’s dinner table. I want that kid on my dystopian survival team. Nurturing yet practical.
These clubs go beyond raising animals and tending gardens and strive to foster equality, inclusion and leadership. After all, we learn that the four Hs stand for a head for clearer thinking, a heart for greater loyalty, hands for larger service and health for the greater living for club, community, country and world.
I don’t relish imagining the end of modern civilization. But should it come, former 4-H’ers are the kind of community I want around me.
