Fifteen years of Ag Field Days!
This past Wednesday, the Virginia Cooperative Extension Office and Smyth County Schools continued a partnership that started back in 2011, the Smyth County Ag Field Day for 4th Grade.
Ag Field Days (AFDs) for elementary school audiences are nothing new to our area. I have participated in AFDs even before I started working for Extension nearly 27 years ago.
The goal of AFDs is the same… make students aware of the leading industry in their county. The format is pretty much the same as well. Students and their classroom teachers rotate through stations that focus on a commodity; each station is manned by a local or regional expert in that field who shares a concise 10–15-minute message about the station’s topic before the group rotates to a new station.
Over the years, one of the inescapable truths you learn is that the volunteers make the event fly. First, they need to be wise enough to cover the topic in ways the students understand and do so quickly enough to be at a reasonable stopping point in the time allotted to them.
In Smyth County we are lucky to have 16 to 20 volunteers we can call on to travel to Chilhowie (some come from out of state) and share lessons on 16-18 station topics.
We try to match the number of stations with the number of classrooms, although we do ask teachers to partner with a colleague to combine their students into a group. This allows two important aspects of the Smyth AFD.
First, it offers teachers the option to take a bathroom break while their colleague provides group overwatch. It also allows teachers the ability to deal with a disrupter, if need be, although truthfully that rarely happens.
Second, and most importantly, the number of groups and stations allow volunteers to take a break between talks. Smyth AFD volunteers speak for 10 minutes and then take 10 minutes off where they can get some water or take a restroom break.
This fall, we had 8 groups rotate through 16 stations, one of which is a restroom break for students. The others are Dairy, Goats, Horses, Sheep, Poultry, Beef, Machinery, Ag Careers, The Extension Office, Water (Evergreen SWCD), VA Regions, Trees, Tobacco, Bees and Nutrition.
Special thanks to WL Farms who provide us with a great facility to hold the event and the Town of Chilhowie who provides our port-a-pots, in exchange for help with other events.
Upcoming Events
Oct. 22--Smyth Washington Cattleman Meeting, 4-H Center, 6:30 p.m.
Nov. 3--VQA Sale.
Nov. 6--Deadline to consign calves to December VQA Sale.
Nov. 9 & 11--VQA Take-Up.
Nov.16 --Private Pesticide License Recertification, 300 Gordondale Road, Atkins, 6 p.m.
Nov. 18--Private Pesticide License Recertification, Office, 8 a.m.
Dr. Andy Overbay is the agriculture and natural resources extension agent for Smyth County.
