Success StorySuccess story 1



Success story 1

Author: Austin Smith

Planning Unit: McCracken County CES

Major Program: 4-H Agriculture Core Curriculum AND Natural Resources

Plan of Work: Increasing Agriculture Awareness

Outcome: Initial Outcome

One in five kids do not know where their food comes from. I got to experience this firsthand this summer at west Kentucky 4H Camp. We took more boys than we had spots in the cabins so I volunteered to sleep in the tents with our remaining 12 boys. They were between the ages of 10 to 12 years old. Throughout the night the dairy cow that was at camp was mooing all night long. The next morning when we woke up and started getting ready the boys were talking about how crazy of noise this that the horse was making all night.

They were not even joking, they were dead serious. So I took them over to the cow to have a short lesson on where their milk comes from on the way to breakfast. Luckily our office had already started planning a Ag field day to host the following fall. 

Last week 263 3third-graders from three of the Paducah city schools came to the McCracken county extension office for our first ever Ag Day. There were all kinds of stations for the students to rotate through to learn about everything from sweeping insects, to soil conservation, and Farm machinery.

We also had lots of hands on stations for the kids to learn about such as a fake milk and goat, taking corn grinding it and making it into cornbread, and a petting zoo. I made sure that everyone was able to tell the difference in a cow and a horse by the time they left. 

This was a great collaborative event that involved all parts of our office. It was the first office wide event that I was here for the entire process from start to finish as an agent. The kids and teachers all had a great time we are looking forward to expanding and starting planning for next year.






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