Today, the Peach Blossom 4-H Club is around 85 members strong and meets at the Delaware State Fair in a building dedicated to agricultural education programming. Scott and Elaine’s children, Leslie Webb and Leighton Webb, spent their youth in the club. Now adults, they serve as volunteers alongside their parents. Leslie is also a UD alumna.

As the organizational leader for the Peach Blossom 4-H Club, Elaine volunteers around 500 hours a year. Scott leads the archery project group. Leighton, who previously served as a junior leader for the archery group, continues to share his skills as an adult volunteer.

“Kids really want to learn those kinds of skills,” Elaine said of the archery project. “It’s not something that all parents are able to help them with.”

For the past 10 years, the Peach Blossom 4-H Club sent a team to the Delaware Envirothon, a problem-solving natural resource education program and annual competition for Delaware high school students. Envirothon provides an opportunity for Elaine, an engineer for Delaware’s sediment and stormwater management program, to share her unique skill set. Elaine has mentored several Envirothon team members who have gone on to attend UD and join CANR’s award-winning soils judging team. 

“The experience teaches kids about a variety of agricultural careers,” said Elaine, a professional engineer for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC). 

Her daughter Leslie currently advises the Envirothon team for the Peach Blossom 4-H Club.

“Participating in the Envirothon is how I learned about environmental engineering and soil science,” said Leslie, who majored in environmental engineering at UD College of Engineering and minored in environmental soil sciences through the Department of Plant and Soil Sciences.

Leslie is a civil engineer with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). She follows in her parents’ footsteps. Scott says his UD degree enabled him to modernize and introduce technology to Lea View Farms, the family’s 1,100-acre poultry and crop farm in Greenwood, which he operates alongside his father, Ronnie and his son, Leighton.

“My planter is completely controlled by a computer, and now there’s one in the combine, too,” Scott said. “After college, we converted to computer-controlled poultry houses. The transition to that was a whole lot easier because I worked with the technology at UD.”

Scott’s combined engineering and agriculture background informs his stewardship of the land. He is a member of Delaware’s Nutrient Management Commission (DNMC), serving as a poultry representative for 20 years and is also involved with Delaware’s Tax Ditch program. 

“Scott and I were in the very first class UD offered on stormwater management,” said Elaine, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Delaware State Fair. “The course gave insight into how the state manages stormwater.”

Through that course, Elaine found her calling. She’s worked for Delaware’s sediment and stormwater management program for 30 years.

“A lot of the regulators in our program have come out of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources,” Elaine said. “One of Scott’s college roommates is now managing the Kent Conservation District. Those connections from UD, they go deep.”

Between UD and 4-H, the Webbs are well-connected in Delaware. The family’s impact on 4-H is undeniable, but Elaine says the benefits go both ways.

“I was addressing our Christmas cards one year when I realized just how many families we’ve met through the 4-H club,” Elaine said. “The four of us talk about how different our lives would be without 4-H and all of the connections we’ve made and people we’ve met through the club.”

It has been 19 years since Scott and Elaine formed the Peach Blossom 4-H Club, and they show no signs of slowing down. If Elaine’s mother, Mary Jane Zeitler, is any example, the Webbs will likely continue to mentor Delaware youth for decades to come.

“My grandmother is nearing 84 years old, and she still leads the Peach Blossom 4-H clothing project group,” Leslie said of Mary Jane Zeitler. “She works with our kids to create a garment for the Fashion Review every year.”