Happy Farmers

Ambitious farm boys and girls now dream of better farms, not of city life--at least those who are good at farming. So said a poll of country youngsters themselves, taken at the 20th annual 4-H Club Congress in Chicago last week. Polices were the 1,570 4-H delegates, ablest and best-educated group of U.S. farm youth.

Their views:

> 74% preferred to live on a farm, only 3% in a big city.

> Biggest single group of boys (21%) wanted to be farmers; 3% wanted to be airplane pilots; less than 1% politicians or lawyers. Among the girls, it was nip & tuck between being a farmer's wife (8%), a schoolteacher (8%) or an agricultural extension worker (12%).

> Most of them wanted to be educated farmers; 64% said that if they won a 4-H cash prize they would use it for college education.

The poll proved mainly that the way to make boys and girls like farming is to teach them to do a good job of it. The delegates, all champions, were the pick of 1,500,000 members of the 4-H (Head, Heart, Hands, Health) Clubs, which are sponsored and led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the Congress they vied for 47 college scholarships, from $100 to $300 (4-H has a strict ceiling of $300, designed to prevent winners from taking things too easy, make them at least partly self-supporting). Outstanding prizewinners were two boys and two girls who got $300 awards for leadership and achievement.

The winners:

Orlo E. Ruppert, 20, of Nokomis, Montgomery County, Ill., who in seven years raised 135 ewes and lambs, 169 sows and pigs and more than 2,000 fowl; earned $13,243; won 38 championships. A high-school graduate, he is now in a vocational agriculture class.

Wayne Thorndyke, 17, of Lambert, Alfalfa County, Okla., who in nine years raised 128 cattle, 230 sheep, 20 pigs, 950 fowl, 1,478 acres of crops; earned $15,069.

He is a freshman at Oklahoma A. & M.

Margery Habluetzel, 19, of St. Joseph, Mo., who raised 55 pigs, six lambs and three baby beeves; canned no quarts of preserves; sewed 59 garments; earned $1,857. She is a freshman at University of Missouri.

Beth Gill, 17, of Nesbitt, De Soto County, Miss., who raised 2,077 fowl; sold 6,254 dozen eggs; canned 1,799 quarts; refinished 45 pieces of furniture; earned $3,839. She is a freshman at Mississippi State College for Women.

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