Posts Tagged: Fairgrounds
Solano Third Graders Learn the ABC's (of Bugs) from Bohart Museum at Youth Ag Day
Talk about the ABC's! The 3000 third graders who attended the annual Youth Ag Day on Tuesday,...
Tabatha Yang (center) education and outreach coordinator for the Bohart Museum of Entomology, talks to visitors at the Youth Ag Day. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Bohart associate Parras McGrath greets the third graders. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
It was like a photo shoot at the Bohart Museum's booth. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A wide array of expressions at the Bohart Museum booth. At right are Noah Crockette and Tabatha Yang of the Bohart Museum of Entomology. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Eager third graders ask Parris McGrath if they can hold the Madagascar hissing cockroaches. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Entomologist and Bohart Associate Alex Nguyen answers questions about insects. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Bohart Associate Noah Crockette enjoys talking about insects. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Kearney helped more than 2,300 Kings County third graders learn more about agriculture.
The Kings County Farm Day was held at the Kings Fairgrounds in Hanford on March 1, 2016. This collaborative effort of the Kings County Farm Bureau, the Kings County Office of Education, and the Kings Fair provides a venue to increase the awareness of third grade students about how our lives depend upon Agriculture. Students were exposed to Agricultural equipment, animals, and practices. Presentations and workshops were provided by older students in 4-H and FFA along with many other volunteers. Everyone helped make the event that served 2335 third graders and 105 teachers from 35 schools a great success.
Kearney helped by providing a lettuce planting workshop. Kennedy Baker, a Kings county 4-H All Star, who is a junior at Lemoore High School, joined over twenty other volunteers to help students learn what it takes to be a healthy plant and a healthy person, as well as plant 2 leaf lettuce seedlings to take home, grow, and enjoy eating.
A Hanford Sentinel story on Farm Day can be found at this link; A Kings County Farm Bureau story is here.
2012 Heirloom Expo
For those of you who read my blog entry last year around this time, you know that I had attended the first annual Heirloom Expo at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa last year. Having trouble keeping away, I attended the Heirloom Expo again this year on September 11, 2012 (the Expo usually runs for 3 days in early-mid September, from Tuesday to Thursday). It was just as well organized and entertaining, as it was last year. What made it especially memorable this year, was because some of the heirloom vegetables on display were grown and harvested by my former neighbor (see the pics featuring melons and eggplants). To clarify, the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company has a research plot just 2 doors down from where I used to live in Suisun Valley, and it is there that they grew umpteen varieties of eggplants and melons which they displayed at the Expo.
One of the vendors at the Heirloom Expo, was Paul Palmer of the Los Olive Homegrown Gourmet Garlic company (aka the “Garlic Guy”) located in the San Ynez Valley, which grows, according to an August 2010 blog post by the company, over 61 varieties of rare garlic (see pics). Check out Paul’s website here-http://www.garlicguy.net/99639385, which contains sample photos of some of the amazing varieties he grows. I spoke with Paul regarding what his secret was to successfully growing garlic, and he told me that he amends his soil with at least 25-30 tons of high quality compost per acre. Now most of us city-dwelling garlic lovers do not have an acre to do what Paul does, but we can take that same principle and scale it down to our backyards (where we can exercise greater control over our growing environment than on a farm) and produce some amazing, beautiful, and rare garlic every year which you can then save and trade with friends and family, and replant each year.
As for me, I grow garlic each year and have found success in growing several varieties such as German Hardneck and Ichelium Red. This year, in addition to the Ichelium Red, I will be planting seed garlic from Paul, varieties which include Spanish Morada (hot), Spanish Benittee (hot), Thai Purple (less hot), Red Razan (medium, all-around variety) and Fabermadour (a baking garlic which, according to Paul, is good for spreads). I will report back the results next June when I harvest!
Many varieties of eggplant. (photos by Betty Homer)
Melon varieties.
Baskets of gorgeous garlic.
Of California and fairgrounds and things I can't buy right now given the budget situation
The governor has released a list of state properties that might be for sale in this time of unprecendented budget crisis. On that list are a couple of fairgrounds, including the Ventura County Fairgrounds.
The Ventura County Fairgrounds is actually California's 31st Agricultural District, and is under the oversight of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. You can visit that website to learn more about our Fairs and Expositions; they represent a great, and perhaps underutilized resource in our state.
Per a report produced under the leadership of Gray Davis (remember him?):
The full report is at: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Fai
We know that the mission of fairs has grown to include commercial ventures that hold little relation to agriculture (such as car races). But I also know that the Ventura County Fair is one of the last great fairs in California, one that truly evokes the spirit of agriculture, past and present, and helps people to understand more about those who work to feed us.
California legislates by ballot box. Competing initiatives and propositions from different election cycles make it difficult to develop and provide a coherent and sustainable roadmap for the state. The passage of one ballot initiative, for example, may rule out another.
California's initiative law was passed in 1911, during the Progressive Era. Ballot initiatives provided an instrument that enabled 'the people' to check excesses during a period when there was little regulation of industry or other aspects of American life (call it the Gilded Age). Peter Schrag, a columnist with the Sacramento Bee, has written about this in "Paradise Lost," which is available at
(Schrag has also written a book more recently about California as America's "high stakes" experiment. He generates interesting and thought-provoking work that will challenge your thinking in any number of ways. If you hold the view that the beginning of the budget crisis in CA dates back to Prop 13 in 1978, Schrag's work may resonate with you. Even if you don't hold that view, you'll find his viewpoint worth considering, and he's a lively writer).
We are in a world of budget trouble in California. I have been sharing this with the many Mid-Westerners that I speak to on a daily basis. I don't know that my out-of-state friends fully comprehend the size of the state, and the implications for the nation if the experiment here fails. Per 2008 census estimates, 36,756,666 Americans live here...that's nearly 1 in 12. We have more than 6 MILLION students K-12 enrolled in our public school system; that's greater than the entire population of some other states. We're a MEGA state by nearly every index, including the challenge index.
So what does this have to do with the sale of state property? Agriculture is not just something that's part of our past, as in some other places. It's vital to California's future, and the state's current economic health. And the kinds of foods we produce are vital to human health, which ought to be a national priority. This is important and heady stuff, the stuff of a nation's food security, a nation's future.
How do we preserve this and assure agriculture's vitality for future generations? We continue to educate the public about the importance of agriculture, no matter how deep the budget cuts go. If anything, we do MORE. Agricultural education is our seedbank; it is where we should be sowing more now, to reap future benefits. Not just in California, but nationally.
The threat to sell state properties such as fairgrounds may be a publicity stunt on the part of the Governor. He is clearly trying to let citizens know that we are in a dire situation, and that whether these ballot measures pass or not in the upcoming special election, that there is going to be a lot of pain to go around. He is daring us to consider what might happen if we fail to approve these measures. Double dog dare the voters.
But talk about selling fairgrounds? If we value the future of agriculture in California, this is not a dare any of us should be willing to take.
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