On Friday, September 6^th, HAREC launched the 2013 fall education season by piloting From Watersheds to Planter Beds, a water education program developed with the help of our summer intern, Lauren Martinez. The central theme of the program centers around four questions—why is water important? What impact does water have on the world? How is water significant to agriculture? How does Ventura County receive and use water? Eager beta testers from Briggs School located across the street from the Center arrived with plenty of enthusiasm. The 6th grade science students tested activities and games that focused on five key topics: water cycle, evapotranspiration, soils, watersheds, conservation. The activities were well received. Students completed evaluations rating each activity and described something they had learned. Some students offered suggestions on how to make the activities better. All students gave the program high marks for FUN!

4H Classroom Outreach and Farm Field trips for grades K-3^rd is well underway. Extenders are deployed weekly to classrooms throughout Ventura County. The most popular fall lesson ties language arts and science standards for Kindergarten and 1^st graders. Based on a classic children’s book, Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, students explore the life cycle of a pumpkin from seed to pie. One of the favorite activities is touching a real pumpkin vine brought into the classroom from the farm.

Handling a real pumpkin vine for the first time

 

School buses deliver 2^nd and 3^th graders excited to participate in the agricultural literacy field trip that repeats spring and fall. The farm is transformed with seasonal plantings. This year, raised beds teaming with pumpkins and other winter squash varieties provide an opportunity to explore cucurbits. Students (and adults) enjoy comparing and contrasting the flowers, leaves and learning about the nutritional value of this plant family.

Over 2200 youth from Ventura County schools will participate in 4H Classroom Outreach and Field Trip programs which run through the end of October. Small pumpkins to take home produce big smiles!

 

Join the Farm, a program of Abundant Table Farm Project currently leasing 3.65 acres at Hansen, held a weeklong youth farm camp this month. Erynn Smith, CSA Coordinator and Farm Educator for the program, describes their space as “a sustainable farm growing produce in ways healthy for earth, farmers, and our community”. For the past three years, Smith has hosted a farm camp. This is the first year the camp has operated at the Center.

Thirty campers, ages 7-11, from Camarillo YMCA enjoyed daily themes and hands-on activities illustrating valuable agricultural concepts. Erynn introduced farm ecosystems, soil science, and composting, planted flowers to attract beneficial insects and identified insects considered to be pests. The children enjoyed meeting and interviewing other farmers and participated in healthy farm cooking making kale smoothies and beet brownies. In assisting Join the Farm staff harvest and deliver over 200 pounds of fresh produce to Food Share—a local food bank, they learned the value giving back to the community. As a way to bring the farm to fork concept to life, Smith urged campers to be “ambassadors of health” at home, encouraging their families to eat fresh food harvested at camp.

Agriculture in Ventura County is part of our culture and tradition but many youth (and adults) lack an appreciation for the science or hard work required to put food on our tables. With innovative and age appropriate lessons, Smith did a great job raising awareness of local and global food systems—as well as creating lifelong summer memories of fun on the farm.

How do plants use water? What is a watershed? UC HAREC Education Outreach Intern, Lauren Martinez, takes the show on the road trying out some of the fun hands-on activities she’s incorporating into a new water education program for the Center. Visitors witnessed transpiration from a plastic wrapped plant, identified the xylem in a celery dissection and stomata in a citrus leaf under microscopes, predicted water flow on topographical maps and made their own watershed. The booth created intrigue. Who says science can’t be fun? Over 300 youth (and adults) participated in science based activities and left with an appreciation for an important natural resource… along with stickers, wacky water word search and coloring sheets to remind them of the vocabulary and principles they learned at the Ventura County Fair.

 

IGIS, is a new ANR Statewide Program established in 2012 to provide GIS support, software, data, and training to ANR http://ucanr.edu/sites/IGIS/. The ANR-EON (eddy flux towers), an important component of the program, is  a network of instrumented sites in managed ecosystems (agricultural, range, forest), wild lands and urban ecosystems was installed at HAREC on August 2. The sensing instrumentation is compatible with the resources of the National Ecological Observation Network (NEON).

NEON is designed to gather and synthesize data on the impacts of climate change, land use change and invasive species on natural resources and biodiversity. Data will be collected from sites across the U.S. http://www.neoninc.org/. The long-range goal is to instrument all ANR REC sites. Sensor data will be available to ANR and other researchers.

 

 

Many thanks to Todd Perez (IGIS), Kuni Kitajima (UCR), and HAREC staff for instrumentation installation and set up.