Young people are becoming more removed from where their food originates. School-age children do not have a proficient understanding of how the food system works and the types of agricultural commodities raised in the local area. In addition, young people need to be educated on healthy food choices, many of these foods being grown locally. The Farm Friends Barn is being built to provide The Little
Farm Hands Project to our youth and other agriculture related projects for all! This building will also be available for meetings, birthdays and other events. In collaboration with local agricultural and conservation organizations, we would like to build/create a Little Farm Hands display for the Sherburne County Fair. “Little Farm Hands at the Fair” will be an agricultural education exhibit for kids. Children (ages 3-10) become farm hands at this hands-on exhibit as they experience the agricultural process beginning at the farm and ending at the market. Little Farm Hands and their families get their work aprons and fire up their imaginations to help with farm chores, collect goods to sell at the farmer’s market, and then spend their “earnings” at the grocery store. This mock ag adventure will consist of a series of livestock barns, a grain bin, a tractor dealer, garden plots, an apple orchard, and a farmer’s market. The experience directs and explains what happens to food from a starting point to the last step in the process at the grocery store. The finished set and materials could be portable and other agricultural groups could lend it to promote agriculture in their area. Each station provides hands-on tasks related to planning crops and the tending of animals. For example, at the chicken coop, the farm hands feed the chickens the grain they “harvested” and then collect the eggs. At the dairy barn children milk a cow and at the tractor shed they drive peddle tractors with wagons to haul the hay for the animals. After the children have gone through each of the miniature barns and collected their products, they “sell” them a the farmer’s market for “cash” to be used at the retail grocery store where they have the opportunity to “buy” their finished product such as apples, milk, cereal, jerky, soy nuts, fruit and vegetables. Additional stations will address agricultural related service concerns; such as ground water quality and quantity, soil erosion, etc.
