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.

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!

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!

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

Practice makes perfect?

I was never much of a writer, even in high school. Of course just like almost every other college student I can pull a 5 page research paper out of my you know what. But creative writing or blogging, anything where I have to be creative, means trouble for me. It's always been like that for me and I've muddled through, just barely getting by and I'm alright with that. As much as I wish I was a great writer, I understand that I have other strengths.
This week though really brought out my writing weakness. I had to write multiple mass emails for different events (ughh). My boss gave me all the information for each email and I pounded it out until I thought that I was done. I sent them to my boss to look over and overall I did alright! Of course she made a couple changes and added some things that I didn't know about and I emailed them out today :) I'm actually kind of proud of myself, because even though I'm not the best writer I am getting better! Throughout the rest of this internship I will hopefully be writing a lot more (blogs, newsletter, emails). All of this will hopefully give me the practice I need to become a better writer. And of course I understand that I probably won't be writing best selling novels anytime in my lifetime. But hopefully I will eventually be able to write something worth reading, without a lot of editing :)

Big Girl Job

     Coming into this internship I really had no idea what I was getting into with the internship and being an Agriculture Communication major.I started out in college majoring in Animal Science because I really didn't know what I wanted to do. After coming down to Columbus I added on Agriculture Education, which I thought was what I was meant to do. But after finding out that standards were changing in that area I realized that I wasn't meant to be a teacher, that God had something else in mind for me. Unfortunately I was back to square one, not knowing what I wanted to do in life. I added on Agriculture Communication because I really just needed to figure out what I wanted to do, apparently I picked the right major. I've realized that Ag Comm is similar to Ag Ed but I can do more and reach out to more people. The only downside is that I really didn't understand the Ag Comm major. I could read and reread the description of an Agriculture Communication major but I would still have questions.
     I also wasn't really sure of what I was actually going to do during my internship. Of course during the interview process, for my internship, I was told some of the tasks that I would have to help with. But this week really showed me that it's not just Ohio Proud and Ag is Cool.
     During my first couple weeks with Ohio Proud I had to help get applications around for the 2013 Specialty Crop Block Grant. It was a boring and long process because I had to make so many copies of each application for all of the people on the review committee. The part I didn't know was that I would be seeing this through to the end. This week I got to sit in on the review committee meeting and hear from each applicant. I also sat in on the review process and got to hear the good and the bad of each project. I honestly had no idea what goes into trying to get a grant. This whole process has shown me even more about how things in the "real world" works.
      While working with Ohio Proud I have realized that there is so much I can do in this field. Now I just have to narrow the list down. But that is part of the process and gets me one step closer to finding my "big girl " job :)

ODA University

     This week ODA put on an orientation for the rest of their interns called "ODA University". My boss decided that it would be a great opportunity for me, the other Ohio Proud intern and the Ohio Grape Industry intern to participate. ODA University went from Monday til yesterday and through out the week we learned a lot about all of the divisions of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
     On Monday one of the deputy directors, who came up with and put together this program, told us what all ODA did and took us on a tour of the different buildings. The tour didn't really go in depth but we did get to meet with one person from each department and hear a little overview.
     The rest of the week we met as a group with the supervisor of each department where they went over in more detail what they do. We learned a lot throughout the week but what really surprised me was the ODA has an amusement ride safety division. They check every ride and game at all of the amusement parks, fairs, and festivals! They even inspect all of the rides at Ceder Point and Kings Island.
     This week has been very informative and I have learned a lot. But the biggest thing I have learned is that all the divisions do so much. Yes some are more "attractive" than others but each one does a very important job and keeps agriculture safe.

     This week we started planning for Ag is Cool. I had to email a couple different people at the Ohio Department of Agriculture to get help with some of our activities. Because we are representing ODA we want to make sure that we do everything the right way.
     With one of our activities we will have live animals so we really need to make sure that they are taken care of and handled the right way. If they aren't we could get in a lot of trouble, so to make sure that doesn't happen we set up a meeting with the guy in charge of animal health.
     Two more of our activities include soil and none of us know anything about soil so we had to contact a couple of the guys in the soil department at ODA to help us and get us samples. It is really nice that most of the departments at ODA know or have heard about Ag is Cool so they are really willing to help!
     Overall this week went really well and it's so nice to see our plans coming together and I'm really excited to see the final outcome!

Week 2 (1st full week)

Today marks the end of my second week and also the end of my first full week with Ohio Proud. This week was definitely slower than last week just because we didn't have an event. But that doesn't mean that we weren't busy. This week we followed up with the vendors that participated at the Ohio Food Forum and started planning for Ag is Cool at the state fair. I also did some office work (filling, responding to emails).
Overall it was a good week, but I'm really hoping it will pick up. I am really looking forward to all of the planning for Ag is Cool and all of our other events as well.

Week 1-ish?
Friday ended my first three days at my internship with Ohio Proud at ODA. Going into this internship I was really nervous but by knowing the other intern with Ohio Proud really helped. On my first day, Wednesday May 1st, Kristin Kugler and Lori Panda showed me around and helped me set everything up. I put together packets for our meeting later that day with the deputy director. After lunch we went to a meeting with the deputy director and some of the other people involved with Ohio Proud. We talked about different things we could do for Ohio Proud's 20th anniversary at the state fair this year. Later after the meeting Kristin and I started getting things together for the Ohio Food Forum the next day. We left work early on Wednesday because we were going to meet up at 7:30 that night at the 4-H center to set up for the Ohio Food Forum(OFF). On Thursday we all met at the 4-H center bright and early to get ready for the OFF. Vendors started showing up at 8:30am and we showed them were to set up and gave them information packets. The buyers started showing up at 9:30am and we gave them a list of their meetings with the vendors. The OFF officially started at 10am. During the day we made sure that the meetings were going smoothly or trying to set up meetings if buyers didn't show up. I also tweeted about what was going on through out the day on the Ohio Proud twitter page and went around to take pictures of each of the vendor's booths and uploaded them to Ohio Proud's pinterest page. Friday was a slower day, I went through all of our vendors and looked to see who had renewed and who hadn't. The vendors who hadn't renewed I sent an email to to see if they still wanted to renew. I also sent out a couple other emails to people who had inquired about certain things( Ohio Proud shirts and buyers who want to get in touch with certain vendors). Overall I love my internship so far. I am really looking forward to learning and doing more with Ohio Proud. I really don't dislike anything yet. I'm sure I might get a little tired of being in an office but I think planning certain events will out weigh that.