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4-H champ lives best of both worlds
Photo
|The Vindicator | Geoffrey Hauschild.Michele Awad, of Canfield, stands with Flex, her Black Angus and Hereford mix cow that took first in Market Class at the Canfield Fair.
By Ashley Luthern
A Cardinal Mooney senior had her hands full at the Canfield Fair.
Michele Awad showed two steers, two goats, a hamster and two dogs, a yellow lab and a German shepherd-chow mix, for 4-H.
“At school people are surprised that I’m in 4-H, and when I’m at 4-H, they’re surprised I hang out with people from the city. No one believes it either way,” Awad said.
Awad lives in Canfield and keeps her animals at a farm in North Lima, where she also raises chickens for eggs and meat. Her summer wasn’t much of a vacation.
“I woke up at 8 every morning and would go straight to the farm,” she said.
Once there, she would wash and blow dry both of her steers to make their coats fluffier. Awad has the second- and fifth-biggest steers at the junior fair at 1,545 and 1,435 pounds.
This is Awad’s fifth fair appearance. She began 4-H showing pocket pets, in her case a hamster, and dogs. Last year was her first time showing steer.
“She was going from hamsters to steer so it was a little unexpected, but now she’s done it all,” said Davene Van Brocklin, her 4-H pocket pets adviser.
Her father said Michelle has taken a different path than her family, many of whom are in the medical field.
“Since she was a child, she loved animals, and she’s not really a farmer’s daughter,” said Mounir Awad, who is a surgeon.
That interest in animals was furthered by annual visits to the Canfield Fair.
“I always had to look at every single animal in every single building. I was just enamoured with them,” Michele said.
Michele, who was an Outstanding Youth candidate and secretary-treasurer for the Jr. Fair Board this year, plans to become an agricultural veterinarian.
“As I got the different animals, I learned their anatomy and physiology,” she said. “4-H made me more responsible.”