Urban farming teen brings 4-H to Seattle | Community Spirit

At 9 years old, Wallingford resident and Seattle Academy student Nina Finley decided she wanted to be a farmer and, by necessity, an urban farmer. The rest of the city finally caught up to her.

During the past seven years, while she was commuting to and from the suburbs to show her rabbits, chickens and ducks at 4-H events, Finley noticed an explosion in the number of livestock, vegetable patches and urban farming organizations in the city.

“In my neighborhood, Wallingford, I know of three chicken coops on every block,” she said. “One neighbor keeps honeybees, and another has two Mini Mancha dairy goats.”

When a mother asked Finley about how she could get her son involved in chicken raising during last summer’s Seattle Tilth City Chicken Coop Tour, Finley decided it was time to start Seattle’s first farm-centered 4-H Club.

“Tons of these urban farming families have kids, and I thought it was absurd that there still weren’t any livestock clubs in the city,” Finley said.

Though Seattle does have a 4-H club for dogs and one for guinea pigs, the city lacks any 4-H club focusing on what the century-old organization was started for - farming.

Not for long.

The first meeting of the Seattle 4-H Club will take place from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Jan. 2 at the Finley house. Finley is looking for children ages 5 to 19 to participate in monthly two-hour meetings, community service days and 4-H events and field trips.

“Think about what you want to get out of this club,” she writes on the club’s website. “What animals or projects are you interested in? What skills do you want to learn? Cooking? Rabbit breeding? Gardening?”

4-H can teach young people about “farm arts,” such as sewing, gardening, baking and raising livestock, but it also teaches its members important life skills, such as public speaking, record keeping, community service and leadership, Finley said.

She said she has especially made leaps in organization and leadership.

“I’ve gotten so much more comfortable with public speaking,” she said. “It if weren’t for the skills and confidence I gained from being club president and a teen leader in my 4-H Club, I never would have been able to start this new club in Seattle.”

Finley said the biggest challenge to starting a 4-H club in the city is the distance between Seattle and the organization’s events . The King County Fair is an hour away in Enumclaw and field trips are taken to Monroe, Renton, Issaquah and elsewhere, she said.

But, Finley said she thinks that will change as the Seattle 4-H community grows.

“Instead of the city kids always trekking to rural areas for 4-H events, we might even get some rural farm kids to come visit the city,” she said.

Anyone interested in getting involved in the Seattle 4-H Club or attending its first meeting can email Finley at ninafinley@seattleacademy.org. The club is also looking for adult leaders to teach one-time workshops, become volunteers or just learn alongside their child.