Access to local fruits and vegetables are limited in Pendleton County. Despite the health benefits, only 2% of Pendleton County adults get the recommended servings of fruits and vegetables compared to the state average 8.0% of adults meeting the daily fruit intake recommendation and only 6.3% of adults meet the daily vegetable intake.  Nationwide, only 12.2% of adults meet the daily fruit recommendation and only 9.3% meet the vegetable recommendation.

To help with this situation the past two summers the Pendleton County Agents, FCS agent partner with Farmers Market, local parks, and the Pendleton County Fair Board to offer a summer fitness challenge, called Fitness for Produce.  A mini grant was received to help finance with this challenge from Wellness Kentucky and Anthem.  With our target audience being youth and parents of school age children, Extension and community partners offered educational classes, agent led hikes, community service project opportunities and activities for families to do on their own.  

Fitness Challenge

One of those activities included our new black topped ¼ mile long trail around the Pendleton County Extension office that has five trial outdoor fitness stations. The challenge allowed families to participate in physical activity events and earn tokens to spend at our local farmer market.  The average participant earned $31 in tokens to spend at our market.  As a result of our efforts 61 children and adults participate in the challenge.  Participants continue to join this program every summer.  One participant shared “We will be eating healthy for a while and cannot wait to spend all our tokens.”  Those that attend our group hike have shared they are thankful for the opportunity to hike with a group, they feel safer and enjoy meeting other hikers who love to walk. 

Other participants shared the challenge increased their awareness of hiking opportunities in our own county and helped become more physically active while providing them the benefit of being able to purchase local grown produce.  

Our service project last year had participants spreading river rock in beds at fairgrounds to help make the fairgrounds more presentable during the fair and cut down the cost on mulch annually.   

2022 summer group led hikes have already been planned and we are excited to watch this program continue to grow.