Massive Squash & New Farm To School Manager
Massive Squash & New Farm To School Manager plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.The Oregon Department of Agriculture has a new manager for their Farm To School Program. Amy Gilroy talks about what is planned for the future.
GILROY: One of the things we want to do it obviously continue to build off the success of the program. There's quite a bit of legacy that the program has at a national level. A lot of what I'll be picking up is work that my predecessor had a lot of success in creating. In terms of where we're headed I think we're still trying to determine where we're going to focus in the next few years but one of the things that we will be doing is addressing some of the gaps.
Last Saturday saw a record breaking event and it was a big one. This giant weighed in at 1,578 pounds. What was it you ask? It was the largest squash ever and it topped the scales at the Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off at Bauman's Farm near Gervais, Oregon. Some of the largest pumpkins and squash weighed in during the event over the weekend with the winning squash being grown by Eugene's Scott Holub. That's a lot of squash.
Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray.
Several members of my extended family decided they would take the Ice Bucket Challenge, where each poured a bucket of ice water over his or her head and challenged others do the same or make a donation to fight ALS within twenty-four hours. Starting this week and running through the rest of October the 4Liters Challenge involves living on just 4 liters of water per day in an attempt to educate the general public about water poverty. That converts to just a little over 1 gallon of water a day. For most of us here in the U.S. water is in abundant supply, but for many people in third world countries water is in scarce supply and often not safe for human consumption. Considering that on average most Americans use more than 400 liters of water per day, using 4 liters per day is definitely a challenge; one that I would like to invite everyone to attempt. Taking the 4Liters Challenge won't make for quite the photo op that the ice bucket challenge did, but it will certainly be a great opportunity to learn first hand how precious having clean, easily accessible water on a daily basis is.
Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.