A couple of years ago, I helped to create an agriculture education program for our schools in Greenwood County and we called it You Are Here.
I hadn’t grown up in an agriculture community, so marrying a rancher and moving to the country was quite an education for me. I figured that everyone around me knew everything that I was learning…until my kids started school. I figured all the kids would know what mine did, growing up in a small agriculture-based community, but they didn’t.
I was very surprised.
On top of all of that, I was continuing to work in Wichita and as I learned more and more, I shared the realities of how cattle is raised and crops are grown with friends in town and found myself having the same conversations over and over again about agriculture.
I realized that something needed to happen, we needed to do something big.
So we started a ranch tour. It enabled us to be able to bring people out and SHOW them what we did here in on the ranch.
Then as the challenges of a general lack of agriculture knowledge on my mind constantly and ‘how could we fix it’… I was also dealing with a work problem: our struggles in the city in every profession to keep Kansas kids in Kansas after they finished school.
It all clicked.
We have to make our kids proud of where they come from, and to make kids proud of Kansas, they need to understand Kansas, they need to have a knowledge of agriculture.
So we started an agriculture education program.
And it was great… it IS great.
When we started we heard comments from kids like…
“Chocolate milk comes from brown cows.”
“Food comes from the grocery store.”
“food is grown in factory farms”
“Cattle are bad for the environment”
So we talk about these things…and the kids learn(ed).
And now we are (as quickly as we can) sharing that program on You Tube for everyone. So while you are home schooling your kids, you can share with them the beauty of Kansas and agriculture education from the people that are doing it each day.
Meet families that are raising cattle and crops.
Meet the experts that we turn to when we are making decisions about our operations and more!
All designed to teach the kids, be fun, and you might learn something too! Plus you can download worksheets so they can participate in worksheets from math to matching terms and so much more!
What is really exciting is this is a really busy time on the ranch and farm. We have calving going on, we are getting ready to start planting, and we will start burning the Flint Hills soon too!
Hope you will follow along.
What is the difference between the farm and ranch anyway?
Tune in to find out!
