Archive for the ‘Family’ Category:
Eat dinner with your family tonight
K-State Research and Extension is inviting families to sit down to dinner together tonight.
Extension, the Kansas Family Partnership and Regional Prevention Centers across the state are promoting Family Day to help educate families and create awareness that regular conversations between parents, grandparents, guardians and children are a prevention tool to keep young people safe and help them make good decisions.
Research from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs.
Family Day is a nationwide initiative to show that parental engagement is the single most effective way to prevent substance use and abuse among youth. Family Day is celebrated the fourth Monday of each September, making today this year’s celebration September 26, 2011.
Dinner makes a difference
The family dinner doesn’t need to be fancy. It’s the connection, not the menu, that’s important. Just taking time to listen to your child can go a long way in building a positive relationship that could help when they may someday be faced with an offer of drugs or alcohol. Teens who seldom eat with their parents are twice as likely to report that half or more of their friends drink alcohol, compared to teens who have frequent family dinners.
Research shows that a child who gets through age 21 without smoking, abusing alcohol or using illegal drugs is virtually certain to never do so.
The Family Day partners are encouraging businesses, faith communities, law enforcement, education centers, schools and community groups to also get involved in promoting and celebrating the Family Day event.
One of the keys of Family Day is letting the child in your life know you love and care about what is going on in their life. No one has more power to prevent kids from abusing alcohol and drugs than you do.
So, tonight, eat dinner with your family. What your kids want- and need- for dinner is YOU.
“Knowledge for Life” provided by the Finney County Extension Office and K-State Research and Extension.
Subscribe to the comments for this postWin cash prizes at the Finney County Fair
The Finney County Fair will be held this week, July 28-30, on the fairgrounds in Garden City. There’s plenty of entertainment and activities to make everyone happy. But, did you know that participating in the Finney County Fair could be profitable, too?
There are many categories to enter at the Finney County Fair, including a couple of specialty baking contests that should be fun and rewarding. This year’s theme for the Great American Foods Contest for youth and adult bakers is “Go Bananas”. Entries may be any non-perishable baked product which contains bananas. Prizes are $100, $75, and $50 to the first three winners in both age groups.
The Kansas Soybean Commission also sponsors a $35 cash prize for the top entries in the Soybean Bakefest baking competition. The three soy categories are cookies, quick breads and yeast breads, where every entry must include at least 1/2 cup of soy flour, soy milk or other soy product.
Top place winners in three special photo contests will receive $25 prize money for their accomplishments. So be sure to enter the Great American Photo Contest with the theme “Growing Food in Finney County” or the Sandsage Bison Range photo contest featuring the “Bison of the Range”, or the Beef Empire Days Photo Contest with your best photo of any of the events or activities of Beef Empire Days.
Most entries at the Finney County Fair will earn premium prize money according to their ribbon placing. Premiums will be paid at the conclusion of the Fair when exhibits are released on Sunday, July 31 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. Be sure to pick up the prize money for your entries!
Full details are available in the Finney County Fair book, available online at www.finneycountyfair.org or in print at the Finney County Extension Office. See you at the fair!
“Knowledge for Life” provided by the Finney County Extension Office and K-State Research and Extension.
Don’t Give Up on Tomato Plants During Hot Weather
Tomatoes are a warm-season plant that’s averse to summer heat.
When daytime temperatures rise above 95 degrees, the plant’s ripening fruits turn orange, not red. If those hot days combine with nighttime temperatures above 75 F., the plant’s fruit set is poor.
“Neither reaction is permanent. If you can just keep that plant alive, it’ll produce normally again when the weather’s cooler,” said Ward Upham, K-State Research and Extension horticulturist.
To avoid heat’s “orange” effect, gardeners can harvest when existing fruits first start to ripen from green.
“They’ll finish ripening off the vine,” Upham said. “And, if you keep them in temperatures of 75 to 85 degrees, their red pigment will form just as it should. You’ll get normal-looking, deep-red tomatoes.
“If you don’t want to go to the trouble, though, don’t worry. Orange tomatoes are just as edible as red ones.”
Gardeners can’t force tomato plants to set fruit in hot weather. Heat not only leads to abnormal growth in the flowers’ reproductive organs but also interferes with pollen’s viability, he said. Wind and/or dry weather simply make the responses worse.
“It takes about three weeks for flowers to try to develop fruit before you can see something’s wrong. At that point, fruit should be within a week of reaching full size and starting to change color,” Upham said.
“Heat-set” tomatoes are now on the market under such variety names as Florida 91, Sun Leaper, and Sun Master, he said. Often, however, they can handle just 2 to 3 degrees more heat before they also develop fruit-set problems.
“Fortunately, going from flower to ripened fruit generally takes no more than 45 days. So, if gardeners can keep the plants alive now, they should have plenty of time to harvest more tomatoes before first frost,” Upham said.
Source: K-State Research and Extension News
“Knowledge for Life” provided by the Finney County Extension Office and K-State Research and Extension.
Your chances of divorce may be much lower than you think
By now almost everyone has heard that the national divorce rate is almost 50% of all marriages. This is true, but the rate must be interpreted with caution and several important caveats. For many people, the actual chances of divorce are far below 50/50.
The background characteristics of people entering a marriage have major implications for their risk of divorce. Here are some percentage point decreases in the risk of divorce or separation during the first ten years of marriage, according to various personal and social factors:
Factors and Percent Decrease in Risk of Divorce
- Annual income over $50,000 (vs. under $25,000) -30%
- Having a baby seven months or more after marriage (vs. before marriage) -24%
- Marrying over 25 years of age (vs. under 18) -24%
- Own family of origin intact (vs. divorced parents) -14%
- Religious affiliation (vs. none) -14%
- Some college (vs. high-school dropout) -13%
So if you are a reasonably well-educated person with a decent income, come from an intact family, are religious, and marry after age twenty five without having a baby first, your chances of divorce are very low indeed.
Also, it should be realized that the “close to 50%” divorce rate refers to the percentage of marriages entered into during a particular year that are projected to end in divorce or separation before one spouse dies. Such projections assume that the divorce and death rates occurring that year will continue indefinitely into the future—an assumption that is useful more as an indicator of the instability of marriages in the recent past than as a predictor of future events. In fact, the divorce rate has been dropping, slowly, since reaching a peak around 1980, and the rate could be lower (or higher) in the future than it is today.
Source: “The State of Our Unions 2009: Marriage in America” The National Marriage Project, University of Virginia, pages 75-81.
“Knowledge for Life” provided by the Finney County Extension Office and K-State Research and Extension.
Knowledge at Noon Program on “Gardening For Success in Southwest Kansas”
Attend the March Extension Knowledge at Noon program to learn more about gardening for success in southwest Kansas. Shirley Buller, KSU Extension Master Gardener and 50-year veteran of gardening on the high plains will share the benefit of her experience and training to inspire local gardeners to make the most of their southwest Kansas gardens.
Knowledge at Noon, sponsored by the Finney County Extension Office, will be Thursday, March 3, from 12:05-12:55 pm at the Finney County Public Library, 605 E. Walnut Street in Garden City.
The public is invited to attend this program. Bring a lunch if you wish; coffee and tea will be provided.
For more information on the Extension Knowledge at Noon programs, please contact the Finney County Extension Office at 620-272-3670.
