After two hours of weeding at the Ironton Head Start building in sweltering temperatures, 11-year-old Samantha Booth was fairly sure when the job would be done.

“Never.”

This was, of course, said with a laugh as she soon returned to the task at hand. Her attitude was representative of the community-minded spirit her Coal Grove 4-H club, the Country Kritters, were focused on.

Chris Moore, main adviser for the group, said that Head Start had provided some supplies to the group for their booth at the recent fair. Their thanks was a comprehensive clean-up of the school’s site.

Since the 9 o’clock hour, the club had encircled the building, pulling up weeds and doing some edging work on the sidewalk of the school.

Moore emphasized though that her group didn’t just want to help the school out, they wanted to give a gift to the whole area.

“When we saw how our community supported us at the fair, by market sales and spending money in the 4-H food booth, we knew we had to give back,” Moore said.

What the ’Kritters hadn’t counted on was what Mother Nature had in store for them, namely temperatures that threatened to climb into the triple-digits.

Although most of her crew were wearing muddy smiles, and they were kept well-hydrated by an onsite cooler, Moore admitted to a little bit of precipitation envy for last week’s festivities.“Where’s that fair rain now?” she said with a tired smile. “We could use some of that here.”