Kindergartners were excited to learn about farming and agricultural products during their field trip to the Fall Festival last week.
Waves of busloads of kids brought the wiggly youngsters to the Ken Moncrief Ag Center, otherwise known as Ceres Unified School District’s student farm located behind Hidahl Elementary School on Redwood Road for agriculture-related lessons and hands-on activities led by Central Valley High School’s agriculture leadership students who are also a part of the FFA program.
Students were accompanied by their classroom teachers as they rotated through different educational stations for short lessons.
“We are their first farm field trip,” said Central Valley High School ag teacher Jessie Cardoza.
She noted that her high school students are so eager to participate that as freshmen they ask how they can get involved.
“I tell them they gotta be in ag leadership and so they take ag leadership so specifically they can do that,” said Cardoza. “They love teaching the kids.”
Students were each given a seed to plant in a small container to take home and also took home their own personal pumpkin.
At the tractor exhibit, Aaralyn Jauregui sat in the driver’s seat and fired up the tractor to show how the lift worked. Ephraim Castro, Jose Mendoza and Scarlett Maldonado explained to kindergartners that there are more than a hundred types of tractors that can be used for a variety of purposes ranging from carrying heavy and bulky items to planting. Some tractor come equipped with buckets, rakes, grass forks and spinning disks.
One Westport teacher was amused Thursday morning when she overheard one of her students walk past the chicken pens, and asked aloud, “Are these the chickens from Chick-Fil-A?”
Dressed in cow suits, Isabella Michelena and Sofia Garibay educated students on facts about dairy products generated from cow milk. They noted that to make one pound of butter, 21.8 pounds of milk are needed, a pound of cheese requires 9.8 pounds of milk, ice cream 12 pounds and yogurt just one pound.
The two also led students on a short catchy tune about dairy products.
In discussing pumpkins, students were told they grow on every continent except Antarctica.
The Fall Fest was started about six years ago on the CUSD student farm established in 2011 due to the leadership of then ag teacher Ken Moncrief. He has since retired and moved to Albany, Oregon.
“It started with just Hidahl (students) coming over and then we expanded it to a couple more schools,” said Cardoza. “And then it became every kindergartner which was close to 3,000 kindergartners we had out here. But since the declining enrollment we’re at about 2,000 that are coming to the event this year.”
She attributed the shrinking attendance to the declining birth rates and the fact that Ceres hasn’t built any new housing in recent years.
“This farm was supposed to be a park because we were supposed to be surrounded by tract home and that never happened so the district came to us around 2011 and said, hey, do you want to farm it?”
