Jack County Youth Fair: 1908 Corn Club Reconvenes, Finds No Corn
Jacksboro 4-H Members Reopen the Minutes of the First Texas Boys’ Corn Club, Learn Their County Now Grows Cattle
JACKSBORO, Texas — More than a century after it last met, the First Texas Boys’ Corn Club has been formally called back into session at the Jack County Fair Barn, where a group of 4-H members from Jacksboro, Bryson and Perrin discovered that the organization that started 4-H in Texas had never actually adjourned.
“There was no motion to adjourn anywhere,” said the club’s new recording secretary, a Jacksboro sophomore who has kept a record book since third grade. “Somebody had to finish the meeting.”
The club, according to the Texas Historical Commission marker for the Birthplace of Texas 4-H Clubs, was founded in Jacksboro by Tom M. Marks, the first Jack County agent, and enrolled 111 boys as demonstrators. The marker calls it a forerunner of U.S. 4-H clubs. It was, above all, a corn club.
Jack County no longer grows corn in any quantity that the federal government is willing to discuss. The minutes of the reconvened meeting, released to Farm.FM, record a group of teenagers absorbing that information in real time.
Call to Order and Roll Call at the Jack County Fair Barn
Call to order. The meeting was called to order at 6:04 p.m. on the Wednesday of fair week, immediately after hog weigh-in, by the presiding officer, a Bryson eighth grader using a borrowed feed scoop as a gavel, the original gavel being presumed lost in a museum or a creek.
Roll call. The secretary called the 111 original members. All 111 were marked “excused, 1908.”
Quorum. The parliamentarian, a Perrin seventh grader holding a copy of the youth fair rulebook, raised the question of whether the meeting could proceed. Under fair rules, a species with fewer than five entries is not offered. Six members were present. The parliamentarian ruled that the club was a species, and six is more than five.
Previous minutes. The previous minutes could not be found. A motion to approve them anyway, “on the assumption they were fine,” carried unanimously.
Old Business: A Founding Date With Two Official Answers
The first item of old business was the club’s own birthday. The historical marker gives the founding year as 1908. The Jack County office of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension says the Corn Club was organized in 1907 and evolved into the first Texas 4-H Club.
A substitute motion to celebrate both years, “so nobody has to be wrong in front of a historical marker,” carried, and the club is now officially 118 and 119 years old, depending on which wall you are standing next to.
The second item was the corn. The secretary read the club’s original purpose, growing demonstration plots of corn, then asked, “Where is it?” The minutes record a silence of forty seconds, broken by a heifer.
Treasurer’s Report: Jack County’s Top Crops Include No Corn
The treasurer, a Jacksboro freshman who checks her breeding does’ milk teeth with the seriousness of a bank examiner, presented the 2022 Census of Agriculture.
Jack County, she reported, has 889 farms on 573,752 acres. Ninety-five percent of the county’s agricultural sales come from livestock. There are 48,900 cattle in the county. The top crops by acreage are hay, at 9,680 acres, and wheat, at 3,220 acres. Pecans, cotton and oats are listed as withheld, to protect the privacy of whoever is growing them.
Corn does not appear among them. “We are the corn club,” the treasurer summarized, “in a county where the oats have more privacy than the corn has acres.” She then reported a balance of $11, from a bake sale.
New Business: Motions Under the Jack County Youth Fair Rules
Motion 1. To rename the organization the First Texas Boys’ and Girls’ Hay Club, to reflect present conditions. A member noted that hay is the county’s largest crop and has never once been given a historical marker. The motion failed after the presiding officer observed that “Corn Club” is on a sign, and signs are expensive.
Motion 2. To enter the club itself in the Creative Arts Collections division. The Jack County Youth Fair rules require collections to fit within a two-foot by two-foot space. The club’s collection consisted of one framed photograph of the historical marker, one bag of feed-store cracked corn, and a hand-drawn map of the county with a small star where the members believe corn was last seen. It fit. The motion carried.
Motion 3. To admit a steer as an honorary member, on the grounds that he had personally consumed more corn that month than the entire club had grown in its history. The steer, comfortably over the fair’s 800-pound minimum, attended in the sense that his pen was eleven feet away. The motion carried on a voice vote, and he is listed in the minutes as “member, nonvoting, bawling.”
Motion 4. To file a formal protest with the Fair Board asking why the birthplace of Texas 4-H holds no corn show. Protests require a $100 fee, refundable if the Board agrees. The treasurer reported the club had $11. The motion was tabled until the club could either raise $89 or become less sure of itself.
Committee Reports and the Cornbread Remake Rule
Ag Mechanics. The committee presented plans for a one-row corn planter built from a set of disc blades and a garden tractor axle. The required notebook included drawings, materials, costs, photographs, and a final page titled “Where We Will Plant It,” which was blank.
Floral. The committee entered an arrangement of dried cornstalks and wheat in the 60-minute Floral Cup round. The committee then reported, with concern, that floral champions must recreate their arrangements for the sale. “We used every cornstalk in Jack County the first time,” the chair said. “The second one is going to be wheat with a good attitude.”
Food. The food committee entered a pan of skillet cornbread in Creative Arts, avoiding the meringue, whipped cream and mixes the rules forbid. The cornbread won its division. Under fair rules, food champions must be remade before the auction. The committee found enough cornmeal at the feed store to bake it again, sourced, the bag implied, from a Gulf Coast county that grows 58,170 acres of the stuff and has never once thought about it.
The remade cornbread sold Saturday, three percent going to the Show Barn Building Fund. The club declared it its first corn harvest since 1908 (or 1907).
Adjournment. A motion to adjourn was made at 8:51 p.m. The secretary stopped the vote. “Last time somebody forgot this part,” she said, “and it took us 118 years to get back in the room.” The motion was seconded, counted by hand, and signed by all six members and, in a manner of speaking, the steer. The minutes were then laminated.
Five Humorous Observations About Texas 4-H Livestock Shows
- The whole 4-H movement in Texas started in Jacksboro with 111 boys growing corn. Today, Jack County grows hay, wheat, and 48,900 cattle. That’s the birthplace of baseball switching to golf.
- The oats in Jack County are withheld from the census for privacy. The oats. Somewhere out there is a field of oats with a lawyer.
- Six teenagers ruled that their club counts as a species so they could clear the five-entry rule. Best legal reasoning ever performed next to a hog pen.
- The food champion has to be remade before the sale. Most adults can’t make the same cornbread twice on a quiet Tuesday. These kids do it with a sale crowd waiting.
- The original club never adjourned. For more than a century, the founders of Texas 4-H were technically still in a meeting. Explains a lot about ag committees. They’re not slow. They’re waiting on 1908.