This is behind the clover, real four h talk with real four h pros. A look at four h from the perspectives of four h professionals from Illinois and beyond with your host, Henry Kraft, Amy Henshin, and me, Ryan Littlejohn.
Henry Craft: 00:38You know, this is part two of our conversation with the Kurt Sinclair. We just found so much value in what he was sharing with us last time that I just couldn't find the nerve to cut any of it. So we're gonna go ahead and continue our conversation with Kurt. And just to reintroduce you, in case you missed part one of the episode, we're gonna share with you our AI translated intro for Kurt, and it's a beaut. So here we go.
Henry Craft: 01:02Buckle up. In the heart of rural Illinois, where the Sinclair and Harris families tilled the land and embraced the simplicity of farm life, a unique journey began. Born into a family of 11 on a farm near Farina, the Sinclair legacy intertwined with agricultural roots of the Harris family from rural Jasper County near Yale, Illinois. A tale of love and perseverance unfolded as his father, a young man freshly returned from the Korean War, embarked on a journey with a new Buick and the GI bill in hand. Little did he know that his path would cross with a captivating homecoming queen from Eastern Illinois University, ultimately leading to a story that blended love, humor, and a touch of rivalry with none other than the Jerry Van Dyke.
Henry Craft: 01:48Thank goodness. Otherwise, the Kurt Sinclair would never have even come to pass. Fast forward to the bustling year of 1993, a pivotal moment marked by dedication and a commitment to the four h cause of volunteer turned four h enthusiast, our protagonist, Kurt Sinclair, delved into a daunting challenge, the rejuvenation of the four h memorial camp. The camp, with its cabin shrouded by towering weeds and a meager $12 to its name, stood at the precipice of uncertainty. Undeterred, our protagonist armed with a toilet plunger hanging from his belt and pliers in his back pocket embarked on a journey to transform the camp's fate.
Henry Craft: 02:29As fate would have it, a twist in the tale unfolded when his then supervisor Beatrice Bagby recognized the unwavering commitment and turned what seemed like play into a serious endeavor. His camp manager's role transitioned into that of an extension educator, all while our protagonist continued to approach the task with a blend of work and play that resonated with the spirit of four h. From leaning buildings and sliding shingles to a thriving camp with a surplus in its revolving account, this is a story of turning challenges into triumphs, all while keeping the essence of play alive. Join us as we delve into the extraordinary journey of someone who found joy in their work, turning adversity into success, and etching a unique mark on the four h legacy. Alright.
Henry Craft: 03:18Here we go. Let's continue our conversation with Kurt.
Curt Sinclair: 03:22Stay true to yourself. Don't do anything stupid, but but go ahead and fight the machine. It's okay.
Henry Craft: 03:31Man, that's so interesting to hear your I mean, the saga of almost creating you didn't just create your own position. You created the environments for which your position grew out, I think. I'm a I guess it's also a story of persistence, right, of you. Like, you did it. You found value in it.
Henry Craft: 03:52Again, I think I hear those elements of of reverence for shooting sports and what you can gain out of it. Right? I mean, just the way you talk about hunting, you can tell Chris Sinclair believes that there's something inherently valuable in shooting sports and, like, the hunting, culture. And just to that's really cool because being someone fairly new to the game, and Ryan's I mean, in the last two years is is fairly new in his position. But just to see, I don't think that's something that that anybody really feels like empowerment to do.
Henry Craft: 04:30But I I I have a lot of adoration, I guess, is the word I'm looking for for just your stick to itiveness in doing what you believe in. I think that's awesome. Man, that's a great story. That's see, that's that's why we love her time is because of stories like that. That's really cool.
Henry Craft: 04:49But I think I I so we're bouncing back and forth here. I that that was exactly where we want this to go, and I appreciate you sharing it. I think the nature of of our interview is gonna go back and forth between super serious, which I love that too. Kind of fun. And I think Amy had a question that I wanna lighten this up so we can get back into our next topic.
Henry Craft: 05:12But if we went back Amy, what was that question that you had all queued up for Kurt?
Amy Henschen: 05:17I think Ryan and I have talked about this before, and we wanna know Kurt. Because I I'm an outdoors person too. I'm not as into the things you're into. We're both into different outdoor things, but we always share good recommendations of places to go, especially places with less people there, which I love. So we're always talking about where are you going?
Amy Henschen: 05:34But I know you spend a lot of time fishing, and I know you spend a lot of time hunting. If if you could only do one of those things for the rest of your life, which one are you picking?
Curt Sinclair: 05:44Well, it will be fishing. And the reason is that as I get older, honestly, hunting is more demanding in physically, particularly the way I do it. It's going to be harder and harder for me to hunt, and I will lean more towards the fishing aspects as I get older. But I've been fishing longer than I've been hunting. My father didn't teach me to hunt.
Curt Sinclair: 06:11I taught myself, and I didn't start hunting until I was an older guy. The the PSC Archery Company had a factory in Muhammad, Illinois when I was growing up, and they had another one in Arizona. And the first bow and arrow that I got was came from a guy that also worked at the forest preserve that worked part time there, and he could get me what they called a second. It had a paint flaw on it or something. And and so I started just with a second bow from PSC and three arrows that didn't match, and I just had a passion to harvest my first deer with bow and arrow instead of a gun.
Curt Sinclair: 06:54And so that's how I just taught myself to bow hunt, and I made some mistakes and had an accident falling from a tree doing that. And then I have another real serious subject that I won't talk about on a hunting accident that made me want to become a hunter safety instructor.
Amy Henschen: 07:13So why why fishing over hunting?
Curt Sinclair: 07:14They're both spiritual for me. I love to eat what I either garden or or harvest or grow myself, be be them meat rabbits or whatever. I mean, that's just, that's my favorite way to live is kinda like field the table, whatever whatever the buzzword is today for that. And the fishing thing, I think, is just gonna be easier to, have as a lifelong, endeavor. And I think it just takes me back.
Curt Sinclair: 07:39Water takes me to a place that, again, is religiously spiritual for me and probably because of those moments with my mom.
Henry Craft: 07:50So I heard tell that Kurt Sinclair has a hunting trip coming up, but we didn't know where or what you were hunting. Or I
Amy Henschen: 07:58mean, Kurt Sinclair always has a hunting trip coming up. It's just relative. Right?
Curt Sinclair: 08:03But it was
Amy Henschen: 08:03something they was gonna miss, and it was we were trying to decide what you
Henry Craft: 08:07were going hunting for if you were trying to get your big five turkey or what.
Curt Sinclair: 08:12I need a few more I need a few more squirrels and a few more, rabbits for the freezer, and that ends on the February 15. But Amy asked me the other day about something, and she mentioned she's putting together a camp experience program for staff. And so, yeah, I was there for thirty years. I'm like, well, where was Amy when I was there? She asked me if I'd come help, and I mean, like, duh.
Curt Sinclair: 08:37I mean, well, I know every inch at Torrey Memorial Camp, but inside and out, I lived lived there lived there for thirty and a half years. So there's nothing about the place I don't know. But she asked me to come when I have a turkey tag. My son and I have turkey tags for our annual turkey hunt that same exact week in April, and we go to Alexander County. That's the farthest county south in Illinois that you can get.
Curt Sinclair: 09:05And I've hunted Southern Illinois for many, many years for with turkeys, for turkeys and, anywhere from Pope County, Johnson County. Lately, I've been going to Alexander because there was a young kid that that I knew growing up when he was growing up, and I used to turkey hunt with his dad. And he became a conservation police officer. Those guys have to for a year and a half, they have to work for, like, six week periods in different places in Illinois and then and then try to survive that. They can get a hotel room and get reimbursed in, a year and a half from the state, or they can call a friend.
Curt Sinclair: 09:45And this guy called me and said, I'm in Macon County for six weeks. I'm like, hey, Logan. If you need a place to stay, stay with me. So Logan and I reconnected when he was 10 years old. Now he's 26 or whatever, and he stayed with me for, like, six weeks.
Curt Sinclair: 10:01And he said, man, I owe you big time for this. And I said, well, if you get permanently located somewhere where there's turkeys, then you need to be my guide, because you're gonna know where they're at. So he's in Alexander County now. So the conservation police officer in Alexander County is my turkey guide. I shoot turkeys every year down there now.
Henry Craft: 10:22That's full circle right there.
Curt Sinclair: 10:24That's awesome. Yeah. That guy can turkey hunt, and he knows where they're at, and he knows everybody. And so, yeah, I got a great guide.
Ryan Littlejohn: 10:34Can I try to convince you to give me your tag and you go to 4 H Camp and replace for me?
Curt Sinclair: 10:42I love you, Ryan, but, nope, I like turkey hunting better.
Ryan Littlejohn: 10:46There's turkeys, and then there's Kurt's favorite people.
Curt Sinclair: 10:49That's right. Turkey hunting is an awesome challenge.
Amy Henschen: 10:55How did you find four h, though? Like, how did you pick this job?
Curt Sinclair: 10:58It's about relationships. It really is. When I was in Carbondale in forestry school, I took dendrology, which is tree identification. The grad student teacher of the class was David Shiley. David Shiley taught me tree identification.
Curt Sinclair: 11:17Fast forward a few years, he had been the camp manager at four h Memorial Camp himself, David Shiley, for about nine years when they restructured, and he moved from the camp manager job to a natural resources job. Again, my mother's influence, she was taking kids from Franklin Middle School in Champaign to the four h camp for these three day, two night outdoor ed trips. She knew David Shiley was leaving. She knew my situation of I was up in Wisconsin as a camp or
Henry Craft: 11:52a
Curt Sinclair: 11:52camp as a parks and rec director for a municipality, which had completely dissolved every department head position on a tax revolt type thing, and I was gonna be out of a job. My mom, knowing David Shiley was gonna leave, David Shiley said, hey. How's Kurt doing? She said, well, he's looking for work. And he goes, well, I'm leaving.
Curt Sinclair: 12:15She goes, you are? Next thing you know, David Shiley calls me up in Wisconsin, said, hey, Kurt. I heard you're looking for a job. I'm leaving this one. I said, yeah.
Curt Sinclair: 12:27I need a job. I got a little baby girl, and I gotta I gotta have a job, so I'm willing to go anywhere and do anything. I knew nothing about four h camp work, but I knew I needed a job. And it was who I knew at the time. And, again, my mom helped put me together and put David Shiley and up together.
Curt Sinclair: 12:47And then David Shiley taught me how to turkey hunt. It all works out.
Amy Henschen: 12:51It always comes full circle with you. I love it. You're you're the person who always knows a guy, which I love. I'm like, Kurt, do you know anyone? You're like, oh, yeah.
Amy Henschen: 12:58I got you covered. You gotta talk to this person. That's great. So you were the camp man or the camp director, manager director for a long time, and then you switched over to a state specialist role. So one of the things we're doing in this podcast is just trying to letting people, like, what is these different job titles we have?
Amy Henschen: 13:12What do these people do? So what is your role, as a state specialist? What are the kinds of things you do in that role that maybe you didn't do as a camp director?
Curt Sinclair: 13:21I've I manage a lot more volunteers than I did. At the four h camp, I managed employees. For the most part, just a handful of volunteers, but the shooting sports program runs entirely with volunteers. So getting getting the field staff to understand what the shooting sports program is so that they can help find a local volunteer to run a program is a lot of what I do is just talk to, mostly EPCs to educate them on how they can find the right people to send to some of our trainings so that they can go back home and and do good work with shooting sports, keeping it on the positive side of things. It's my job to keep my ear to the ground on anything that I think would work within our system and our culture and our in our organization that's got anything to do with the environment that would be positive for children and families.
Curt Sinclair: 14:18I have that whole family thing in mind. When I was at the four h camp, yeah, I ran some family camp programs. I usually had them specifically tailored towards some we had a horse camp. We had camp Whitetail. We had fish camp.
Curt Sinclair: 14:33We had these specific things. They weren't broad based family camps. They were focused on one thing. But at the state level, I am thinking, how can I go to work every day for the field staff, for the volunteers that they are on are boots on the ground with? How can I help them?
Curt Sinclair: 14:55So I feel like I work for the field staff instead of the other way around. I'm not saying, here's something from the state four h office. Now go do it. I'm like, you know, here's something that might work for you. If it doesn't, tell me what would, and I will go find a way to make it happen for you.
Curt Sinclair: 15:17I I like to try to do that as much as I can just to say, I'm here to work to make your job more doable and grow your four h program at your level. Because, yeah, maybe I quote I'm in charge of the shooting sports program, but all those other things that they're that the local EPC is doing, gosh. What kind of help do they need? Let me know. Because if it's if it's got to do with tractors, fine.
Curt Sinclair: 15:42I'll spend time on tractors. No problem. I feel like I work for EPCs. I don't feel like I work for county directors. I don't feel like I I work for anybody else, really.
Ryan Littlejohn: 15:51I think one thing I enjoy, Kurt, with you being our state specialist is and this area especially is I I'm down in Southern Illinois. We're a completely different culture from Central Illinois than from Northern Illinois. But if we have something, you can find a way to make it work for all of us across the state. I think a great example of that is the bass fishing curriculum and the sports fishing that you've worked on as one of our state signature programs. I know that's instilled a lot of opportunities for kids throughout the state, but what are some other examples of, like, fruit you have seen from the things that you've done even in four h camp with a state specialist job helping EPCs?
Ryan Littlejohn: 16:35Like, what have you seen grow?
Curt Sinclair: 16:38Well, Amy, on this this call here is amazing at trying to measure impacts and stuff, and I can't I I struggle with that. And so your your question kinda, Ryan, is is about measuring impact. The sport fishing project numbers have gone up a lot since I have run some statewide virtual fishing contests and written some new curriculum, and I wanna kinda keep that going. I've had three or four counties request that I write some more fishing curriculum so they can do more. And, obviously, that'd be a subject I'd welcome spend some time on.
Curt Sinclair: 17:17And the I haven't seen with our oak savannah tree program, I haven't really seen the forestry numbers go up, but far as project numbers. But I get an awful lot of good comments about it, and, we've gotten lots of good press about it. Soil and water conservation districts are much more in touch now with their extension four h staff than they were before we started that pro project because I hear it over and over again. Hey. We're now working with our soil and water on this and this because we got introduced to each other.
Curt Sinclair: 17:52So that wasn't my idea at the start of that program, but I I know it's been a spin off benefit is that there's just another natural resource organization that's working with extension better now than they were.
Amy Henschen: 18:06Okay. Things I love, though, you've done this how many years have you done this oak savannah planting project? Two at least? In this year three?
Curt Sinclair: 18:12Three.
Amy Henschen: 18:14Okay. So but, like, literally, planted a plant, and you're gonna you're in ten years, in twenty years, we're gonna you're gonna actually physically see it grow, which is not something all of us can say we've done in our job, which is I just think is really cool.
Curt Sinclair: 18:29Well, I did see a lot of people grow when I was at the four h camp as long as I was. The camp staff and counselors that I had when I started, then when I was before I left, they were sending me their not just their own kids, but I was employing I was hiring kids of people that I hired their mom. I'm like, oh my gosh. When when you just when you think you guys probably are haven't had this happen to you yet, you just, you know, be brushing your teeth one of these days, and you look up, and you're like, who the hell is that? You know?
Curt Sinclair: 19:14I'm not changed inside my ears here. But when you look outside, you're like, where'd that hair on my shoulders go? I I I could've sworn I was just singing that song yesterday. And then when when those moments come around application where you're like, oh my gosh. I hired her mom back in the nineties.
Curt Sinclair: 19:32And now she's the best applicant I got on my table, and that's she is. And I'm great to have her, but, man, what has happened here? I think what's happened is if you're having that much fun, you lose track of time. It's the days that really suck and really get long are the ones that you're like, gosh. This is just a long week.
Curt Sinclair: 19:54This is a long month. I look back on my four h career and go, that was a blink of an eye. That just went really fast. So I must have been I must have been having a good time.
Amy Henschen: 20:06And, Kurt, I can say from having attended family camp in the in the fall family camp, it's staffed by all people who are overstaffed, who just volunteer their time for the weekend. And when you and you meet these families with their kids or their grandkids, and you're just like, these pee and these people know how to have a good time. These people are blessed. And, like, there's nowhere they'd rather be than here. And you can tell, like, these are successful, well adjusted, awesome adults, and they had a great experience in four h here at camp, and I love that.
Amy Henschen: 20:34And Kurt was a part of, like, all those kids' lives, which is well, all those adults' lives, now adults. So I just like I love that. And I think it's one of most rewarding things about all we do is, like, being able to reconnect with those people who are kids in the program with you ten years later, fifteen years later, connect with their families and their kids. It's just so impactful.
Curt Sinclair: 20:52Yeah. Well, every four h person, I believe, has the ability to do that. The ones that leave never felt that, the ones that stay, the old timers, if you, you know, stay very long, you're an old timer. But once you do that and you realize that you've had that kind of effect on people and they have had on you as well, then, you realize that these four h extension jobs can kind of be what you make them to be. And you do have the power.
Curt Sinclair: 21:24This this is the behind the clover podcast title. It's like that wizard of Oz guy, you know, behind the curtain that's, you know, pulling all those levers and everything, and you've had the power all along, you know, to to make this job what you want of it. And when you run through some difficult times and meet some real cantankerous people, whether they're a supervisor or not, push through that part and stay with the program because you can make four h a four h job what you wanted. There'll be a few hard times, but if you look back on your career, if you stayed with it, it happened to you really fast. You're looking at the end of your career going, dang.
Curt Sinclair: 22:08I'd do that again.
Ryan Littlejohn: 22:10Kurt, you're talking about making it what you want. I think we talked about before that there's hard days as EPCs, and sometimes it eats you up and spits you out, and you're done with it. You don't you don't know what to do. And I hope that through this podcast, we can help EPCs realize that, like, there's a support system for them here, but also, you know, let's try to power through it. Right?
Ryan Littlejohn: 22:35We want you here for a long time. We want you to spend thirty plus years with us. And I think the next step that comes after an EPC is an educator or could be county director, but it could also be a state specialist. So what advice would you give someone who's starting out looking at moving up or trying to apply for a state specialist? Or, like, what advice can you give them?
Curt Sinclair: 22:59Well, become involved in everything that interests you and ignore some of the stuff that does not. And because by the nature of the beast, extension tries to be everything to everybody, and you can't be that. You can't be an expert in everything, which is kind of the way I think people feel when they get into the four h system. Because think about it. You just said the word specialist is at the state level.
Curt Sinclair: 23:30Well, that means I didn't I don't have to be everything to everybody because I've gotten a more narrow focus. Now you could say, well, what's narrow focus about the natural environment? Well, that's a pretty big banana too. But it doesn't have public speaking on my plate. It doesn't have, you know, all these other things that an EPC has to handle all of those balls.
Curt Sinclair: 23:56Every one of those has to be juggled in the air. And so you better find your favorite ones, ones you're good at, ones that you wanna get better at, focus on those, and let some of those other balls rest on the table for a little bit because you can't keep them all in the air all the time. If you try that, you'll get burned out. You will not be any good to yourself or anyone else. The other advice I have is to use the system.
Curt Sinclair: 24:22The system, it doesn't get taken advantage of enough for those that don't stick with it. By that, I mean, do it do the classes. Get get another degree. Get get a certification. Get get something that you see other people don't have and make yourself unique so that four h can't do without you.
Curt Sinclair: 24:45You know? Who in the world would do x if somebody wasn't there doing the the podcast or the or this angle of the work or whatever? Because it's all needed by the youth out there somewhere. And whether you are in that Southern Illinois rural area or a northern urban area, whatever, there is a kid out there that's looking for what you have to offer. And with the technology we have now, it's so much easier to get your personal touch of what four h is to you out there to someone else.
Curt Sinclair: 25:19When I started, we didn't have that. I mean, we didn't have the technology like that like this stuff now. Believe it or not, we at the four h camp in '93, we had one computer with a four inch computer screen on it, literally four inches big. The secretary and I shared it. The flyers we made by cutting with scissors out of a book these little figures and putting a hot glue gun and making our own flyers and then it was harder to get an effect outside, you know, very far outside geographically.
Curt Sinclair: 25:54It was hard then. The fact that we got it done blows my mind on today on how easy it is to have all this technology but feel like nobody's listening to me or I can't reach anybody. Like, yeah. You can. Yeah.
Curt Sinclair: 26:08You can. So if you feel that way, you just need to say, okay. One of my passions about yesterday just was not fun for me. Ex volunteer brought me down. This coworker or this supervisor nixed an idea that I had.
Curt Sinclair: 26:25I'm not done. There's more in my tank. So you gotta take care of yourself. Use the system. Find something you're passionate about, and keep at it.
Curt Sinclair: 26:33Put that canoe paddle back in the water because sometimes the headwinds keep that canoe from looking like it's going anywhere. But if you keep paddling, you eventually get there. And so it's perseverance initiative. You can see who's got it and who doesn't. If you if you see a colleague that you know had it and lost it, you just gotta reach out to them once in a while.
Curt Sinclair: 26:55Like I said, there is a support system here. Hey. Hey. No. Hey.
Curt Sinclair: 26:59You know what? Why don't you why don't you come come with me to to to do something with me for a little bit? Because I'm gonna need your help on these days too. So if we behave like a team and realize we have differences, realize we have ups and downs, you'll make some of the best friends out of the staff that work for four h if you let yourself do that.
Amy Henschen: 27:19I love that so much, Kurt. I think you hit out something really important that I think we don't do enough, which is get our colleagues who are looking like they need a little oomph out of their unit, out of their county, come help you do something fun. Come see the joy on kids' faces. Come play. Come channel your energy into something else you're not bogged down by whatever's dragging you down back in the office.
Amy Henschen: 27:41And see if you know, see what other help you can provide. But just getting inviting those people out to your unit to get a different perspective and a different view on things, I think, is so important.
Curt Sinclair: 27:52Yeah. Trade trading program time together. I know when I was struggling to get four h campers from an x county, For instance, I'd look at my where where the kids were coming to camp from, and I'd see, oh, Moultrie County didn't send but three kids last year. I gotta I gotta be better known in Moultrie County. I call the Moultrie County Staff and say, what can I do?
Curt Sinclair: 28:15What can I come help you with? Do you need an achievement night presenter? Do you need, conservation day help? Do you need learning fun day? I'll be there.
Curt Sinclair: 28:25And offer your help. Why? Because then they know you better. They you're trading you're trading your expertise with them. Next thing you know, you've got fifteen four h campers at camp the next summer because moms and dads met you locally.
Curt Sinclair: 28:44You you gotta put yourself out there. You you you you've just you've gotta make relationships. I mean, I did that a lot and didn't have to. Coulda just sat there at 4 H Camp and whined that there weren't people coming from Moultrie County, but I didn't. I picked up the phone and said, what can I do in Moultrie County?
Curt Sinclair: 29:02And it works. You you get you get back what you give.
Amy Henschen: 29:06100%. I'm just gonna tag in here complete shameless plug as a fellow state specialist. Don't be afraid to invite us to come to you too. We wanna help. We wanna see what you're doing out in the counties.
Amy Henschen: 29:18And we don't get as much face time with with youth sometimes as you guys do anymore since we're kind of trying to do some other administrative stuff. So we need that break too. I'm just shameless plug to invite us out. We can't always come, but if we can, we'll be there.
Ryan Littlejohn: 29:32Kurt, you mentioned this is a group effort to get all the way through this. And I know throughout the two years that I've been here, it's been challenging, especially coming out of COVID and re revamping our program to get it to where it needs to be. I know you saw that probably with four h camp and shooting sports. If you could give a one liner to, like, never give up, something that people can remember, what would you say?
Curt Sinclair: 30:00I'd say hold on to your rock. You've gotta have something solid that's your core. And if you never give that up, then you're gonna be fine. And mine was my rock is to have my career be involved with the outdoors. Now that means I did get to spend more time outside than most people, but that doesn't mean I'm outside every day.
Curt Sinclair: 30:26And so I have to have that rock, and everybody's got their own. But make sure you stay true to yourself is what that means. Make sure that that you you are following the passion that you have because there are so many jobs out there that are gonna have all the baggage that every job has with people you'd rather not be around on certain days or a schedule you'd rather be different or that every job has that. But what this job has, what four h jobs have, is that they have the ability to be what you want them to be in in the highest level of what kind of jobs are out there. Not all of it's gonna be great, but most of it is if you have the mindset to make it that way.
Curt Sinclair: 31:15The only reason there's even any trees getting planted at all is because I thought, how can I get kids planting trees? I knew soil and water had a tree planting program. So I called the state soil and water office and said, I got an idea. How can four h buy trees and have them delivered to the counties through your system? Well, funny you'd ask because we have a forestry committee that has a a Zoom call in thirty minutes, and they're looking for a statewide program.
Curt Sinclair: 31:43I'm like, really? Like, yeah. Let me introduce you to a couple people. I'm like, oh, I already know a couple of those people. Okay.
Curt Sinclair: 31:49So in thirty minutes after making a phone call, we had a new program, statewide program. We wrote a grant, had it done in thirty days, had $10,000 in the bank, went to do a fundraiser at I kicked it off at the, the Farm Progress Show a couple years ago, had people trying to hand me money in the ACE's tent. I'm like, no. No. I said, you gotta go to this website and do it this.
Curt Sinclair: 32:16They don't they don't like guys like me handling money. Who knows what I'd do with it? So instead of raising $5,000, we raised 10. And so I'm like, next thing you know, I've got money coming from places I didn't even envision. Now the program's three times as big as it was two years ago.
Curt Sinclair: 32:33So make it what you want. If I didn't wanna plant trees, we wouldn't be planting trees.
Henry Craft: 32:39So did you have to make up that name, like, on the spot within thirty minutes, the Oak Savannah project?
Curt Sinclair: 32:45No. I just wanted to plant trees. But then when when I looked at at the grant application that I got ahold of, it was like, justify how this program is a part of the state forestry plan. I'm like, you know what I better do, Henry? I better read the state forestry plan.
Curt Sinclair: 33:04So I read the state forestry plan. They said the number one endangered ecosystem is oak savannas. I was like, there you go. That's what I'm doing. I'm planting oak savannas, baby.
Curt Sinclair: 33:13That's awesome. Hope I can find some oak trees.
Henry Craft: 33:16Kurt, listen. Man, I feel like you're you're a walking four h elevator pitch. But as we start to wrap up here and and hear me say, like, add to the list of Kurt Sinclair skills ESP because I feel like you've been talking right at me. You've been preaching, and I've been sitting here listening to it because
Curt Sinclair: 33:36My grandfather was a preacher.
Henry Craft: 33:38Hey. There you go. See? I knew there was skills in there somewhere.
Curt Sinclair: 33:41But he was scary. I hope I'm not as scary because he was Southern Baptist preacher. He had a big old charred man up here in his in his cheek. I didn't get to preaching so much, and the tobacco would be flying out. And he's like, yeah.
Curt Sinclair: 33:54And then I'd be in the back going, oh my gosh. This guy's scary.
Henry Craft: 33:58Better You're get red man on your face. As we wind down though, Kurt, I I wanna ask you one final question. It tends to be the epic one of the bunch. But for you, as your career in four h, I mean, you've been around the block. You've seen a lot.
Henry Craft: 34:17You've done a lot for the program. What is the thing you know, you talked about impact a lot, but what is the legacy you want Illinois Extension four h to remember Kurt Sinclair?
Curt Sinclair: 34:32There's been a lot of awesome people work for Illinois Extension and four h. Some of the best human beings I have ever met have been through this career. And the 4 H Memorial Camp in and of itself is a a memorial to four h who lost their lives in World War two. And to have had the honor to care for that piece of property, what it represents to to those men and women that made that sacrifice for this country and for Illinois four h to honor them with that place, and I got to take care of it. That was my privilege.
Curt Sinclair: 35:18I don't want my name at all on any of that. That is a memorial to all of them. All I did was carry the baton on a very incredible point in our history and a place that honors them. And so I don't want a legacy. I really don't.
Curt Sinclair: 35:38I I, I have a lot of trees there that I planted with my own hands that I will hopefully get to go back and see a lot bigger with my own grandkids, and that's all I want.
Amy Henschen: 35:53Kurt, I adore you. Always humble. But I'm telling you, you have a wonderful reputation among the staff of Illinois four h and our volunteers and our families. And things like our shooting sports program wouldn't be here without the work you put in, and certainly camp wouldn't be in the place it is without that. And so we we so appreciate that.
Amy Henschen: 36:11And this has been a delight having you today. I just, like, feel like we're sitting around a campfire talking, and I love it. We've done that before. It's great. I just love that you were able to join us.
Amy Henschen: 36:21Thanks for taking the time out. I think you're just such a wonderful asset to our program. So many wise words today. I think, our new staff and our existing staff can learn a lot from listening to some of your yarns, and some of your advice. So thank you so much for joining us, and thanks everyone for listening today.
Amy Henschen: 36:37We hope you're gonna join us for our next episode of Behind the Clover, where we'll explore the county director role with Tara Beerster.