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4-H Club has udderly great idea: Club’s goal is to donate 100 gallons of milk per week in May

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HAZEL GREEN, Wis.–Andrew Ingersoll, a Cuba City High School student and member of the Hazel Green Clever Clovers 4-H Club, came up with the idea to donate a gallon of milk to every family that is receiving school meals during the COVID-19 crisis.

Ingersoll initially pitched the idea to Cuba City’s FFA organization, but Clever Clovers co-leader Laurie Runde was so impressed with Ingersoll’s idea that she asked if the club, Ingersoll has been a member of since third grade could help out. 

Runde’s son Ray, a 4-H member and high school student at Southwestern, contacted the school district to suggest the idea.

Hazel Green’s 4-H club members thought it would be a fun idea to make it as a challenge and thought that they could do it for the month of May, creating the #MayMilkChallenge.

“Initially, we thought of it as a good idea and give them an opportunity to help out during this time,” said Runde.

Runde said they reached out to the Hazel Green community for two main reasons: extra milk would be available with not as much being used as farmers would want and people are home more than normal and going through food supplies more than they are used to which results in them going to stores more often, giving them more chances to donate in that way.

“We put it out to the community and have had a great response,” said Runde. “The community just jumped on board with this; it is something different and a nice diversion.”

“I love the response we got from the community,” said 4-H member Kailee Kaiser. “I loved the idea. It is a great way to help.”

“We have received donations from businesses and community members,” said Myles Redfearn, Hazel Green Clever Clovers 4-H president and Southwestern student. “It is a great way for us to buy milk because of the way dairy farmers are being impacted. We thought that it would be a good idea to buy the milk and give it to students for their grab and go lunches.”

The plan is currently to donate over 100 gallons of milk per week as that is the number of families being served by the Hazel Green and Cuba City lunch programs.

So far, the group has donated 105 gallons of milk to Southwestern School District on April 23 and 50 gallons of milk to the East Dubuque School District on April 30.

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Runde said at 4-H students are taught to serve the community.

“This is the perfect way for us to serve the community while also practicing social distancing,” said Runde.

The plans are currently to donate one gallon of milk per family to Southwestern meal program participants. If enough funds are raised, families will also receive a bag of cheese curds weekly.

The club began using the hashtags #MayMilkChallenge and #IDairyYou to find ways to challenge other clubs to help their communities.

“We are promoting it and talking about it as much as we can on social media and in the community,” said Kaiser. “Everyone is talking about it.”

“The community has donated a lot and it has been going really well,” said Redfearn. “It has been very well received.”

All of the proceeds from the GoFundMe page will go toward the purchase of dairy products. The link for the page is gofundme.com/f/maymilkchallenge.

Those interested can also donate where an address is found on the club’s Facebook page. The club also has an account at Apple River State Bank in Hazel Green.

“It seemed like our community already knew that our club wanted to help,” said Runde. “The community wanted to get behind the dairy industry that has been hard hit and also help those in need.”

Southwestern School Disrict has now jumped into the challenge as the school’s middle school student council is supplying prizes to the class that donates the most money. There are two divisions, 4K through fifth grade and sixth grade through 12th grade. The winner of each division gets cheese curds for the entire class.

The student council also will be donating a gallon of ice cream for a weekly drawing. Any student who makes any type of donation will be entered into the drawing.

“In one hand it’s surprising, on the other hand it’s not,” said Anne Redfearn. “Our community is always looking for ways to help each other, but I am shocked and amazed at how fast the community has responded. We always knew how special our community is; we always want to help out.”