Approximately 75 producers in Rockcastle County were approved to get cost share funds through the county agriculture investment program.   Upon being approved for cost share these producers must attend an educational class pertaining to farm management.  Over the past 6 weeks the Rockcastle County extension office has offered a wide variety of programming for producers to attend that will coincide with the cost share program in which they were funded.  These programs include backgrounding calves, hay testing, farm safety, vaccine handling, forage improvement, fencing and on farm water and genetic improvement.  

Since the restrictions put in place for covid-19 the some of the classes have been offered in different platforms.  The meeting room is set up to meet social distancing guidelines.  Also, 3 of these classes were offered on a new format of facebook live for producers who did not feel comfortable attending in person.  WIth these two formats 27 people attended in person and 13 attended by facebook live.  We feel like this was a very successful series of programs to not only improve agriculture knowledge and skills for farmers, but also to help them obtain cost share money through educational classes.  

In the coming months more programs will be offered for farmers to complete their trainings as well as improve their skills in agriculture.