Bear River took a trip to the Nevada County Fairgrounds to be involved in Farm Day, where the Nevada County Resource Conservation District aims to get elementary kids involved in the different aspects of an agricultural education and experience through reaching out to families and local industry organizations.
Senior Elaine Owyoung, who is secretary of the Ag department, likes that Farm Day allows the high schoolers to interact with younger generations.
“Farm Day is a big exposure to younger generations of the ag community where second graders to fourth graders from everywhere across the county can come into one community,” Owyoung said. “They all come class by class and you take them around the fairgrounds to various booths each representing a different field of the agricultural community and they all explain the different parts of ag like, why it’s important, the benefits of it, what it’s like to go into it, and it’s just a lot of activities for the kids, to engage them and to show how fun ag can be.”
Freshman Calleigh Slonski said she’s really enjoying being in FFA so far, and as for Farm Day she loved being able to lead groups of kids around.
“It was really fun,” stated Slonski. “It was really cool seeing all the kids learn new stuff and it was cool having my little brother there, too. I also liked just leading around the kids and just talking with them.”
There was a very big turn out for the event. More than a thousand elementary students were there, and that kept all the high schoolers very busy.
Sophomore Chloe Huiskens thought the day was very positive.
“I think it went really well … the kids all really enjoyed it and it was cool to teach them about all the things in FFA,” she said.
About 50 Bear River students showed up to help educate the elementary students, said Lauren Glomson, the new Ag Science and Floral Design Teacher at Bear River.
“So there was the Nevada County Department of Agriculture, the Cattle Womens, there was stuff about bats and bees and livestock and herding dogs and everything you can think of,” she said. “For Bear River FFA we had two booths. We had our chapter officers and they had an agriculture education/What is FFA booth and a dress-up booth. Which was lots of fun! Tthe little ones got to put on the jacket and learn all about FFA.
“We had another group of students do a cattle dummy roping booth where the kids had a rope and they were able to practice.”
Many members of the FFA program was super excited about the turn out this year and proud of the work they did for all the kids and can’t wait to be a part of more events in the future.