Extension
It Starts With Us
Home Horticulture - Access to Local Produce
Home Horticulture
Imbus, Turner, Koester, Thompson
Horticulture, Commercial
Local Food Systems
Plate It Up! Kentucky Proud
Integrated Pest Management
Our county assessment report indicates that many residents have requested information to gain knowledge about, but not limited to: food education, youth gardening, small scale farming, access to fresh produce, farm to table programming, and farm education for urban youth.
Strengthen existing markets to offer more diversity of products, increase foot traffic to markets and make them a dynamic destination with events, activities, and educational programs (i.e. food demonstrations) to attract customers and visitors.
Provide access to fresh produce to families throughout the county especially in the urban community; decrease hunger; increase food education programs on healthy and safe food preparation methods with produce grown at home and/or purchased from local markets. Increase average fruit and vegetable consumption by one or more servings per day.
Diversify farmers crop production
Collaborating with FCS and SNAP-ED program areas by offering tastings and events to increase customer base and access to local produce
Learn to grow, prepare, and preserve food
Learn a new recipe
Incorporate unfamiliar foods into a healthy lifestyle
Long-Term Outcomes: Increase customer knowledge of healthier cooking options with more fruits and vegetables
Indicator: Increase awareness of cooking with fruits and vegetables
Method: Farmers Market Food Demonstrations and share KY Proud recipes
Timeline: 2023-2024
Intermediate Outcomes: Increase access to fresh produce to families
Indicator: Increase market awareness
Method: Market advertising, youth garden programing
Timeline: 2023-2024
Initial Outcomes: Awareness of health benefits by an increase in physical activity and eating more fruits and vegetables
Indicator: Adopting knowledge to make better lifestyle choices
Method: Walking program in fall with FCS, food deomos, recipes at markets
Timeline: 2023-2024
Audience: Market Consumers
Project or Activity: Fresh produce samples
Content or Curriculum: KY proud or Plate it Up recipes
Inputs: Hort agent, FCS agents, SNAP-Ed, KDA
Timeline: Summer-Fall 2023
Audience: Preschool
Project or Activity: Flowerbuds-improve reading readiness skills while gaining knowledge about fruits and vegetables
Content or Curriculum: LEAP curriculum, FCS and hort publications
Inputs: Hort and FCS
Timeline: 2023-2024
Audience: Market Consumers
Project or Activity: Fresh produce samples
Content or Curriculum: KY proud or Plate it Up recipes
Inputs: Hort agent, FCS agents, SNAP-Ed, KDA
Timeline: Summer-Fall 2023
Audience: Preschool
Project or Activity: Flowerbuds-improve reading readiness skills while gaining knowledge about fruits and vegetables
Content or Curriculum: LEAP curriculum, FCS and hort publications
Inputs: Hort and FCS
Timeline: 2023-2024
Audience: 5th-12th graders
Project or Activity: Hydroponics , Urban gardening
Content or Curriculum: Soil less growing systems, growing tower
Inputs: Hort, 4H, SNAP
Date: 2023-2024
Author: Sarah Imbus
Major Program: Horticulture, Consumer and Home
Providing research based information in a way to meet Extensions clients’ needs can be particularly challenging in urban counties. The National Urban Extension Leaders (NUEL), (https://nuel.extension.org ), shares some challenges that Urban Extension has when sharing information to their communities. NUEL shares that Extension needs to have presence and understand communities to have successful Extension programming. In addition, responding to the demographic trend(s) of urbanization
