The Allen/Simpson County Fruit Tree Grafting Workshop was held in Allen County. This workshop was provided to participants from Allen & Simpson County Extension Agents for Agriculture and UK Horticulture Specialist. Attendees were able to gain knowledge of grafting techniques, get hands on demonstrations, graft their own trees and learn about various fruit tree varieties available in our area. 

With the help of Allen and Simpson County Ag Councils and stakeholders in the community we were able to come up with thus unique workshop that shows a different kind of agriculture practice. Participants were given hands on demonstration and were able to graft their own apple trees to take home with them at the end of the night. This was a great way for folks not interested in large scale agriculture production to get involved with agriculture and learn more about ways that you can be profitable and successful in smaller agriculture operations. Homeowners and backyard gardeners are a large portion of the audience that we serve and we want to get those stakeholders active and involved so programs like this are a joy to those communities members. 

We had a total of 12 participants for the workshop and after paper and verbal evaluation we determined that 100% of those individuals gained knowledge and learned something new. One comment made was “I loved this! You all should have programs like this more often. I plan to buy more trees and start a small orchard for my family”. We enjoy making a difference in people’s lives and teaching them skills that they can use and pass down to others. This workshop was a great success and we will be doing it again this coming year.