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.

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