Friday, August 2, 2013

State Fair!

Everything I have been doing and working on has brought me to this. State fair! The Ohio Department of Agriculture has a tent out at the Ohio State Fair for Ag is Cool. We finally get to see everything come together! 

This year we have 6 different activities. Regional Soil Identification, Seed Identification, Guess the Organs, Life Size Jenga, Wooden Dairy Cows, and 5 live animals. Everything has gone over really well and the kids and adults LOVE the live animals in our tent.

On the life size jenga game we put different wood facts on the ends of the boards. For the soil identification and the seed identification we have picked out 5 different soil types and 6 different seeds and plants. At each of these stations people can try to identify the different things. We also typed up 3 or 4 facts about each seed or soil type.

We brought in 8 different organs and parasites for people to look at, plus a giraffe vertebrae. We have a dogs heart with heart worms, heart worms, 3 different types of roundworms, hairballs, llama gastric stones, bot flies, tapeworm, stomach worms, baby pig hearts, and a horse fetus. All of these came from the Animal Health division at the Ohio Department of Agriculture. All of these specimen were brought in to the Animal Health division to figure out the cause of death. For each specimen we also have 4 or 5 different facts about each. People are really interested in these and are willing to learn more.

I always thought that people understood at least a little bit about agriculture (especially since that's where they get their food, clothing, cosmetics, etc. from) but by participating in Ag is Cool I have realized that there are a lot of people who don't know anything about agriculture. Even though I think this is strange I am glad that I get the chance to help these people learn a little more about agriculture and about what the Ohio Department of Agriculture does.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Last week before fair!!

This week was just a lot of getting the loose ends tied up. We had to finish up making up signs, going to get different things for our activities, and tried not to lose our sanity. Thursday and today were definitely our busiest days. Thursday we went to KG Agri Products Inc. (KAPI) for a video tour visit. They are located in Marysville Ohio. After visiting them we then drove to Van Wert Ohio to pick up straw and plants from my parents. It was a long drive but nice that we could do it all in one day. Then today we had to go to Tractor Supply to pick up some different things we needed. Then we had to go to the fairgrounds to clean off tables for our display and to make sure our tent got set up where it needed to be.

5 days until fair starts and we are all getting really stressed out. We all know it will work out but just getting to there is taking a long time. We are really excited to see how this turns out! Can't wait!

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Traveling Around Ohio

This week we had two events that we had to go to. The first one was on Friday and the second on Saturday. The first event was at Trumbull County Fair, which was quite a drive. For this event we were asked to bring an activity for the kids, so through out the week we were trying to come up with an activity to take. We finally decided on the guess the bug activity that was used at last year's Ag Is Cool. The event was pretty fun, except there was some confusion on where we were suppose to set up at. But once that was figured out the rest of the day was fine.

The second event was at Price Organic Farm. Delaware County Farm Bureau put on an event called Picnic in the Pasture. There we set up a table and talked to people about the Ohio Proud program. There were other groups (dairy, beef, pork, 4-H, and bees) set up as well. We arrived an hour and a half early to interview Tom Price, owner of Price Organic Farm. He was our fifth video tour for the 20th anniversary video tour.

This coming week will be full of tying up loose ends and getting ready for the state fair. 10 days til fair! Eek!

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Feeding the Bison

This week we went on our second video tour.  This time we went to Boss Bison Ranch located in Cadiz Ohio. This was a very interesting experience for me since we have a cattle farm back home. I have never seen a bison/ buffalo before and really didn't know anything about them. I assumed the family would talk to us about their farm and then take us to either the barn or up to the fence to look at the animals. How wrong was I.
Kristin and I at Boss Bison Ranch
Snitch. Always the first one to check out the visitors
and then report back to the group.
When we got there they were very happy to see us and show us around. We sat and talked all about the farm, products, each animal, everything you could think of having to do with bison for about an hour. Then they loaded us up in the bed of their pickup truck and headed out to the pasture. As soon as the truck pulled into the pasture the bison started coming up to us. We definitely got up close and personal with the bison! The let us feed them bread and shoot our footage/ take pictures. These bison were so used to people it wasn't funny. For a second we thought they would try and get in the truck.

Posing with Snitch :)
Kristin feeding the bison!


We learned so much on that trip and had so much fun! It was such a great experience to hear how much they loved being a part of Ohio Proud and how much they benefited. Experiences like this make it all worth it.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

20th Anniversary

This August marks the 20th Anniversary of Ohio Proud! To celebrate this we will be visiting 20 different partners and will be putting together a tour video to show the different aspects and diversity of Ohio Proud. We went on our first tour visit on Wednesday. We visited Rhoads Farm, located in Circleville Ohio. During this visit we sat down with the owner and asked her different questions about her business (i.e. how long they have been in business, what product they have, where they are located, etc). We then went and looked at their farm. They grow different produce items including sweet corn, black berries, cherries, and peaches. It was a great learning experience to see what all they do and also learn how to shoot videos properly so the video director at ODA can with it later. We really wanted to have all of these tours done before state fair so we could premiere the video then but that probably won't happen. But just getting this opportunity to do this is amazing. We will hopefully have them all done before my internship is over :)

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Signs, signs, and more signs

This week we are finally getting every thing nailed down for Ag is Cool. Between myself and the other intern we have almost all the signs made up and have finished the volunteer manual and surveys. Neither one of us have really used publisher before to make signs so that was a little learning curve but we made it through in one piece. And now have some amazing signs :)

We know just have to go pick everything up in July and we have a meeting Monday with everyone else involved with Ag is Cool. By looking through the teacher surveys last year we found we had some issues, so by meeting up we're hoping we can fix everything and make it a great fair!

We also had our first conference call/webinar for the 2011 Specialty Crop Block Grant Recipients. I have never been involved in a conference call or webinar so we had to sign up a couple days early to make sure it would work. It went pretty well, we had a couple glitches but eventually got every thing worked out. We will have one more this coming week and then start working on the 2012 recipients.

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Don't forget to wash your hands :)

This week I've been starting the different signs used for Ag is Cool. Never had to be creative and make signs like these, so I was very nervous about doing this. I have also never used Publisher before, so it too me a few tries to figure out what I could do. Overall I think I did a pretty good job, could be viewed as amateurish but I'll take it :) I am going to post one of them which will also give a little tease about what we're going to have in our tent this year.