Title: Silver Valley 4-H Riders: A Year of Adventure, Learning, and Community Service

The Silver Valley 4-H riders has 11 members this year. Traditionally, we start our year with a trail ride in October along the Battle River. This ride was very pretty with all the fall colours and we get to cross the river with our horses.

Our club rides at the Calnash Ag Event Centre on Monday nights, and we have two instructors that help us with our riding. We practice patterns, showmanship, play some games, and we also have some English rides too.

For our Christmas ride, we dressed our horses up and played some horse games, and we ended the night with secret Santa.

Our club held a public speaking event in February, and many members advanced to zones, districts, regionals, and provincials. We are all very good at public speaking and had some amazing speeches.

We have many fundraisers throughout the year – perogy sales, chamber of commerce, flower basket, and Boston Pizza celebrity servers.

This past weekend was the Alberta 4-H highway clean up. Silver Valley was out on this beautiful day – you might have honked as you drove by us! We also did some volunteer work at Old McDonald Kennels, helping out with the animals, and other kennels of our choice.

We are very busy riding and practicing as much as we can. May 10 and 11 we are attending a clinic at the Calnash to learn different skills to help us prepare for our regional show at the end of May, at the Westerner in Red Deer.

• By club reporter Brooklyn Giesbrecht