The (Encouraging) Mark of Cain The (Encouraging) Mark of Cain

Longtime Extension official leaves imprint on local children for three decades.

DANNY L. CAIN, the Extension coordinator for the Walker County Extension Office, still uses the exact office, desk and filing cabinet he took over when he arrived 31 years ago one October day to work at the Jasper­based Extension office.

"This year, I got me a new chair," he said with a laugh. "This is the first new chair that I've had since I worked with Extension. So things are looking good for me."

The truth is Cain, 54, is quite comfortable in that office. And local farmers, students and officials are just as comfortable with the easygoing, upbeat Cain, who has become a fixture in Walker County — especially with children.

One of his "favorite things ever" is a Daily Mountain Eagle issue from 1996 featuring him and Tony Booth, a boy Cain befriended through Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Cain got Booth involved in 4­H and heifer shows, and also acted as a big brother in general, taking the youth places.

"He is now the nighttime manager here at Walmart, and his daughter this year was in my Chick Chain program," Cain said with pride. "He was a great kid, and he's really made something of himself."

So did Cain, thanks, in part, to his rural upbringing. He was born in Holly Pond in eastern Cullman County, growing up on a 120­acre family farm. While he was in 4­H and later FFA in a smaller school, the family truck farmed corn and other vegetables, bringing green ear corn on a truck to sell at the Finley Avenue Market in Birmingham.

"We had a little cow­calf herd and grew a little cotton every once and a while," he said. "My background was discing corn fields and bush hogging pastures and pulling and hauling corn for a living."

Cain feels now that period prepared him well.

"We worked hard when most kids were doing their own thing, especially in the summertime," he said. "It was a lot of hard work, but we did it as a family. There are just a lot of good memories of going to the farmer's market with my Dad. In later years, Mom would join us as well. It was just a family operation."

He said he was well­fed and clothed, and had a good childhood, although some times were lean.

"I remember one year we didn't get to take a family vacation that summer because the fall Armyworms ate the corn crop down," he said. "So there were a lot of lean years, but there were a lot of good years as well."

Cain graduated from Auburn University in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in agricultural economics (and a master's degree in that in 1992). He worked for a year out of Scottsboro for the Alabama Farm Analysis Association, an Extension program that worked on financial planning, tax work, operation analysis and record keeping for 80 farm families.

Then in 1992, he started at the Walker County office of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System as an assistant county agent "and I've been here ever since." He became the coordinator of the office in 2005.

"Growing up, I was familiar with the Extension and Extension work and county agents from a very young age, growing up on a farm. Some of my very early memories was going with my mom to what, at the time, was Home Demonstration Club meetings," he said. "There were always county agents out on the farm working with dad.

"Occupationally, that is all I ever wanted to do was work with Extension. To be involved in a career that involved being outdoors, working with agriculture and farming and cattle and corn and those types of things — and to be able to help people. I thought, 'How cool is that? How much better does it get?'"

Cain came in another era when almost every Extension office in the state had a coordinator leading the office of certain agents only deliver­ ing programs in their one county. Now, the staffs are smaller and more regional, he said.

"We may have a 10­county area for one animal science forage agent in those 10 counties, or a horticulture agent," Cain said. The regional agent system allows the person to be better trained in a specific subject.

"Your agricultural agent doesn't have to do livestock work, as well as figure out why my soybeans are not yielding what they are supposed to yield," he said. "As a result, I really feel like we have a public that is better served. At least our agents are able to keep up with the change in technology and production these days."

Cade Grace, the son of local farmer Dorman Grace, is the newest agent, over agronomic crops.

"Cade was actually on one of my wildlife judging teams as a junior level 4­Her," he said. "One of the big joys I've gotten is to see the suc­ cesses of the young kids we get to work with. They've grown. A lot of the 4­H kids I now work with are the sons and daughters of the 4­H kids I first worked with when I moved here. That is one of the biggest joys probably any Extension agent would have."

After Cain arrived, he started the wildlife judging program in Walker County in the mid­1990s. "I saw that as a state contest. I thought, 'Man, that looks cool,'" he said. "Of course, I enjoy being outdoors, so we put a team together. We've just kind of grown."

It involves the evaluation of wild­ life habitats, leading to writing management plans for wildlife, both in urban and rural settings. His teams have won senior division state championships four times and gone to three national contests. "We've won five or six times in the junior division as well," he said.

Cain said youth have to be reached differently, as today they are more advanced in areas like technology. "It's not just all about baking cookies and making public speeches anymore," he said. Today's programs include wildlife judging, natural resource items, archery and even shooting sports where safety is taught, using an air rifle, he said. One program, 4­H Innovators, allows 4­H students to teach adults about using computers, cell phones and the internet.

"Kids respond well to just being a part of something, belonging and just to be recognized for what they do and their accomplishments," he said. "That is one of the very positive things about 4­H. It gives young people a realm where they can accomplish things, where they can belong and excel at whatever their particular skill or interest is.”

While he said Extension's information was once targeted to rural or farm families, today only 1.5 percent of the population makes a living on farms and many more live in urban settings. Besides traditional offerings, programs can now address financial planning, food deserts and workforce development.

He noted the amount of technology in agriculture now "is mind­boggling at times." Today, farmers have satellite technology on tractors and implement so the rates of fertilizer, herbicide or insecticide can be changed in real­time across the field.

"We have auto steer technology where you don't even have to steer the tractor," he said, noting it rattles the nerves "the first time you see a John Deere tractor pulling a large implement through a field without a driver."

At the same time, he said with people and products moving so much in a global society, pest and disease problems have been introduced more often in the nation. The growing population also brings more development, leaving less land for agricultural production.

"Our farmers today are asked to produce more food on less land for a larger population than ever before in history," Cain said.

The variety of tasks makes his day fun, he said, not knowing what a phone call could bring. A few days earlier he was in Northport sorting and tagging 325 feeder pigs for a fu ture 4­H project. He worked that morning on the Chamber of Commerce of Walker County's job shadow program.

"By the end of the week, you could be at the Rotary Club meeting or the county commission meeting, or looking at somebody's cattle farm or pasture weeds," he said.

It has given him opportunities he never envisioned growing up, including his time on Facebook and the radio, his weekly tapings on "Coffee Time" for TV­25 and his column for the Daily Mountain Eagle newspaper.

Cain laughed about the 3­year­old and her mother coming with an older column, printed with his younger photo. The little girl would repeatedly look at the graying Cain and look down. Finally, she leaned over and whispered, "Mama, that's not the guy in the newspaper. He had dark hair and looked happy."

He has traveled across the world, including a study tour in Brazil to look at competitive methods on row crops and cattle farms in a worldwide economy. He was in China under a leadership program that looked at all aspects of life there, "which was very eye­opening."

Cain commutes 45 miles from Hanceville each day, where he and his wife, Carla, stay busy with two children, his son Carson Cain, a 7thgrader in Hanceville, and his stepdaughter, Katie Lee, a Dean's List sophomore at Wallace State. Carson has been successful in 4­H here and Cain got to coach him on his own wildlife judging team, which is a source of pride. The family is also active at Center Hill Baptist Church.

He has no intention of retiring soon. While he first thought he would not be in Walker County long, the more he stayed the more he enjoyed it and felt it was like home.

"When I first moved here, I was a kid right out of school," he said. "The community here, it has been a wonderful community to be a part of, because they accepted me right in."

He also loves his co­workers. "The staff I work with is probably as good an Extension staff as I've ever worked around. ... It is a fabulous staff with a lot of talent. It really makes my job really easy. I sit back and marvel at the things they accomplish," he said.

He wants to be remembered as someone who in some way cared about them and their problems and tried to help them with something, whether it was growing tomatoes or helping their children in 4­H. His advice to children seems to be advice he followed himself.

"I tell all my kids I work with, the judging teams and things, to find that one thing you truly enjoy doing, pursue it with all of your talent and all of your ability, and be the best at it you can be. Don't worry about how good or bad somebody else could be,” he said. “You be the best that you can be. If you do that, and you do something you enjoy doing, no matter what future profession that is, you're going to be successful and you're going to be happy in life. And along the way, don't forget to take time to enjoy yourself a little bit."