Morgan County extension agent Marlin Eisenach herded 450 swine, each paired with a teenager, through the National Western Stock Show on Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday, just as many competitors showed up with their lambs, and Eisenach gleefully faced more 12-hour days on his feet in the chilly arena that bustled with animals and teenagers stressed by the competition.
In this environment, Eisenach is happy as a pig in slop.
“I really love working with the youth programs, being around all kinds of kids and being involved with livestock,” he said Wednesday afternoon, as he postponed his sack lunch to chat briefly in the Stadium Hall bleachers.
“The National Western is a really big deal to all these kids.”
Eisenach was a 4-H leader for 10 years while his own three children went through its livestock programs. He liked 4-H and education so much that he cut back his own farm and livestock operations to became a county extension agent 21 years ago when he was in his 40s.
Now near retirement age, Eisenach estimates he has another 10 years of 4-H work left in him, though his sunny, energetic attitude seems endless.
“It gives me a lot of enjoyment to see, now, the children of the kids I’ve worked with coming through” 4-H, he said.
In Morgan County, he manages 450 4-H’ers in 19 clubs, including 350 he has coaxed into livestock competitions.
Eisenach’s enthusiasm for livestock competition spills into his work and rubs off on kids he works with. He has judged more than 300 livestock shows. Three years ago, he went to Kenya for a month to help set up youth livestock programs, a visit set up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Dinah Peebles, an extension agent in Mesa County, said Eisenach was a leader in youth programs at the state fair when she was a 4-H competitor. Now Peebles is a superintendent of a calf program for youth at the stock show.
“He was great,” she said. “He was back then just like he is now” — meaning encouraging and energetic.
Eisenach said the lessons kids learn working with livestock and agriculture carry them through life, regardless of their profession.
“It’s responsibility, No. 1, to care for animals regardless of whatever else is going on, however the weather changes,” he said. “No matter what, a responsibility comes first.
“Very few of these kids are going to go into production agriculture, but they’re going to take away a lot of lessons from working with livestock and agriculture no matter what they do.”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
