Ten-year-old Katie Borka didn’t need luck to set a Guinness World Record in her own backyard.
But the Spotsylvania County girl did need some good-luck charms, and she found them -166, to be exact. That’s how many four-leaf clovers Katie picked in a mere hour’s time Saturday to lay claim to the world record for such a harvest.
Because there was no existing titleholder in the Guinness books, Katie needed to find only 25 four-leaf clovers to become the champ. She did that in just seven minutes of searching.
By the end of the hour, she had surpassed her initial goal of 154 by 12.
The timer started when Katie found the first clover, which she located in a matter of seconds. Katie then placed the clover in a small plastic container to await verification by a three-person expert team composed of Kari Patrick, a master gardener intern at Virginia Cooperative Extension, local agriculture teacher Heidi Davis and Shawn Appling, a horticulture agent from Culpeper County.
Katie’s parents, Sara and Robert Borka, served as witnesses and videographers, while neighbor Angie Perry kept the time and filled the Guinness-required role of “coach.” Family friend Jonathan Davis kept a secondary timer going.
Katie, who has two younger sisters, had absolutely no assistance in finding the clovers. Once she had placed about 10 clovers in a container, an expert would collect it and verify that the clovers each had four leaves and were of the Trifolium repens L or white clover variety, while Katie began filling another container.
“We had to throw out six or seven because they were five-leaf clovers,” Heidi Davis said.
After verification, the clovers were taped to a poster board with individual squares marked with numbers. Katie set her goal at 154 because she wanted her father to have to make another board, which he did once she found her 155th.
It was a soggy morning, but nothing slowed Katie down, except for a surplus of clover leaves. At one point, she casually tossed a six-leaf clover over her shoulder with a sigh. By the end of the hour, she had also found a nine-leaf clover - a first for Katie, who had found two seven-leaf clovers and one eight-leaf clover in the past.
Her mother said Katie has always had a knack for finding the special clovers whenever she goes for walks or spends time outside at 4–H camp.
“She’s never done it for more than five or 10 minutes at a time, so we didn’t know what she would get,” Sara Borka said. “But she really does find them everywhere.”
While Katie does possess an almost superhuman talent for finding four-leaf clovers, Robert Borka said she also thinks the yard itself in the Todds Tavern community is a contributing factor to her success.
The backyard is spacious and filled with rows of garden beds where everything from raspberries to tomatoes are growing. A small section houses chickens, which are allowed to strut wherever they please within the confines of the yard.
“We have free-range birds in the yard,” Robert Borka said. “Katie believes it’s the chicken poop that causes [the clovers] to mutate.”