Strawberries to farmers

A trip out to Idaho's Fremont County to visit with the president of Fremont County Farm Bureau, Val Hammond, as he tells us about a sweet way to introduce kids to farming and perhaps get them to be farmers themselves. This is AG days. This is part of our ag literacy program that we do in Fremont County. We've been doing it for many years. This year we've focused on the book I Love Strawberries. So what we've done is developed a program around this book. The American Farm Bureau has put together educator's lesson plan book. It has eight lesson plans that go with this book. This is a cool program this year because we've started a contest. It's called the Biggest Strawberry Contest. And what we're challenging all of the elementary kids to do is to become a farmer. We're going to give each of them a strawberry and give them the instructions on how to raise the strawberry. They have to make the decisions where to plant the strawberry, whether it's in direct sunlight or in shade, water, fertilizer, all those decisions they will make. And then we have a contest. The 1st of August is when it ends. They can submit a picture of their strawberry that they've grown and we award prizes for the best and biggest, sweetest strawberry. We're just involving all of the kids in agriculture. We're not only educating them, but we're engaging them in agriculture.