2023 Food Partner Challenge project spotlight: Pledging our 4-H dairy farming hands to larger service

Members of the Otsego 4 Leaves 4-H Club in Sherburne County live on dairy farms and participate in the University of Minnesota Extension 4-H dairy project. They wanted to use the milk they produced to care for local families.

The Otsego 4 Leaves 4-H Club submitted their idea to the 2023 Food Partner Challenge and were awarded $500 to complete their project titled "Pledging Our 4-H Dairy Farming Hands to Larger Service."

Club members reached out to their local food shelf, Community Aid of Elk River (CAER), to find out their biggest dairy product need. 

CAER needed a healthy snack-sized item to place into their Kids Weekend CAER Package that are made available to families with school-aged children (grades K-12).

Club members worked with Ellsworth Creamery, where their cows' milk goes, to purchase two-ounce snack-sized cheese curd packages to be delivered to CAER. This resulted in donating 39 cases of cheese curd! And, when Ellsworth Creamery heard about the project, the co-op donated an additional 70 pounds of cheese.

The Otsego Four Leaves 4-H Club felt great satisfaction in donating cheese made from their cows’ milk. They said, “We were able to see such a beautiful outcome of how a simple idea from 4-H'ers can lead to teaching us planning, communication and teamwork skills, and most importantly, it taught us how to serve others in our community who are in need.”