Oregon Ag Fest
Oregon Ag Fest. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
Anyone who has grown up in or near a rural area has a good idea what is involved in agriculture. But for the majority of people that are from urban areas it remains pretty much a mystery. For 24 years parents and their kids have been able to get a first hand feel for agriculture. Michele Ruby is the organizer for the 2011 Oregon Ag Fest.
RUBY: Oregon Ag Dest is a two-day festival that is put together by a group of volunteers, mostly farmers and ranchers, and we simply try to bring farm life a step closer to children and families from urban areas.
Some 17-thousand people will attend this years Oregon Ag Fest.
RUBY: I call it edu-tainment. We try to make education fun by having very hands on activities that help families understand where their food and fiber comes from sowe take over about 5 areas of the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, Oregon and we have everything from a petting zoo that’s all farm animals and we have sheep shearing demonstrations and sheep dog trials this year. That’s going to be a new activity. Different things that people in a city have never experienced before.
She says they like to make the connection especially for kids that even things like the clothes we wear originated with materials grown on a farm.
RUBY: It’s those kinds of messages that all of our exhibitors and volunteers come up with unique and fun ways to demonstrate so you can go to what we call “Ag Country,” it’s an indoor part of the state fairgrounds that we turn into through murals kind of an old, small town - a rural setting. So there’ll be a bank to a dairy farm to a place where kids can dig for potatoes and every single booth has to have a hands on activity for kids.
Kids 12 and under are free to attend Oregon Ag Fest with adult tickets only $7.50.
RUBY: It truly is an amazing event to watch little people go and hold a chick or watch chicks hatch for the first time or see a pancake being made by the wheat commission and connect the dots that “oh those pancakes I eat actually start on a farm somewhere in Oregon.” So that’s kind of our mission is a nutshell.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
