With no or limited options for face-to-face meetings and activities during the COVID -19 pandemic, the Campbell County agriculture agent  made changes to two existing programs in order to serve two underserved audiences.  Care Mission and Brighton Center are examples of two social service agencies in Campbell County who serve the needs of families and youth who often struggle with the basics of food, clothing and shelter.

Care Mission is located in the southern part of Campbell County and serves mostly rural families who need support with food and clothing.   In the past I have provided a display of SNAP and UK resources on a table along with free vegetable transplants for families to choose from. After talking to the executive director of Care Mission about my plan to social distancing, use a face mask and reduce exposure to their clients, I was allowed to continue this program.  This year the resources were prepackaged into Extension bags for distribution.  This eliminated having different families touch the resource materials. The vegetable transplants were sorted into individual packets of six plants giving each family an opportunity to select the transplants they needed without touching other plant materials.  This allowed me to serve the needs of 47 families with UK/ SNAP resources and free vegetable transplants while social distancing and wearing a mask.    

For  three years I have worked with the Brighton Center Newport Youth Leadership program.  In the past  I have coordinated farm visits to showcase the importance of agriculture while giving inner city youth the opportunity to experience farm life. Since I was unable to do on farm visits this year, I turned to virtual field/farm trips. I used KY Farms Feed Me videos as well as a videos I developed showcasing two equine farms.  I also developed a PowerPoint showcasing farming enterprises in Campbell County. I put together individual packets of different agriculture food resources (corn, soybeans and wheat) as well as several animal and human foods that are made from these farmer produced/raised food crops. The videos and PowerPoint was presented to the students via Zoom during two, two hour programs.  Though not as exciting as regular farm visits, I was still able to reach inner city youth with agriculture information in a safe and timely way.