Adventures in agriculture | Coeur d’Alene Press

COEUR d’ALENE — Curious children dug their arms right into a bin of uncooked corn, laughing and chattering as they loved the tactile expertise Wednesday on the Kootenai County Fairgrounds.

“I discovered that there are numerous components of the way you develop corn and the way there are numerous issues that you would be able to make with it,” mentioned Ramsey Magnet School of Science fifth-grader Vivian Werner. “If you’re taking away rising corn for a yr or so, there’s quite a lot of issues that you would be able to’t have. It’s attention-grabbing. It’s additionally very cool you should use uncooked corn for a lot of issues.”

Across the fairgrounds in the animals barn, college students engaged with dwell goats and tried their arms at milking.

“I’ve by no means milked something,” Ramsey fifth-grader Margarita McCormick mentioned with a chuckle. “It was bizarre. It was squishy and bizarre.”

Weird, however instructional.

“You have to scrub your arms earlier than you do it, in any other case the milk might get contaminated,” she mentioned. “Honestly, it isn’t that unhealthy.”

More than 1,700 fifth-graders from space college districts and residential faculties are collaborating in the hands-on Farm to Table subject journey on the fairgrounds this week. They’re studying in regards to the function agriculture performs in day by day life and the way the United States has some of the considerable, protected and reasonably priced meals provides in the world.

Stations embrace beef, dairy, sheep, greens, soils, water, bees and extra.

The fairgrounds has hosted this farm-related instructional affair since 2015 excluding 2020. It has blossomed from a one-day occasion to a few days of agricultural exploration.

“It’s an important age to do that. We can maintain their consideration they usually come house with nice info that sticks with them for a lifetime,” honest common supervisor Alexcia Jordan mentioned. “It’s actually all the things for a way you get your meals from the farm to the desk.”

One extra group will undergo the Farm to Table stations as we speak.

“It’s simply so enjoyable,” Jordan mentioned. “At each station, they’re studying one thing. They stroll out and you may hear the chatter as they transfer from station to station on what they simply discovered.”