Agriculture education
DEVIN WEEKS/Press Vegetable farmer Erica Gregerson of Gregerson Family Farm in Dalton Gardens tests the vegetable knowledge of Jordan Way’s fifth-grade class from Garwood Elementary School during the Farm to Table day Thursday at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds.
Arms shoot into the air Thursday as Carol Parrott's fifth-grade class from Betty Kiefer Elementary School answers whether brown cows produce chocolate milk during the Farm to Table day at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds. Answer: No, they don't. (DEVIN WEEKS/Press)
DEVIN WEEKS/Press Garwood Elementary fifth-graders Landree Simon, left, and Jersi Fitting peer into a field microscope to get a better look at aquatic invertebrates at a water quality station at Farm to Table at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds Thursday.
By DEVIN WEEKS
Staff Writer
COEUR d’ALENE — If anyone can get kids excited about vegetables, it’s vegetable farmer Erica Gregerson of Gregerson Family Farm.
“I learned that female bell peppers have four different (lobes) and males have three," said Garwood Elementary fifth-grader Emeliakay Inslee.
"Carrots don’t have seeds on the inside,” said Emeliakay's classmate, Brooke Klinge. "I didn’t know that carrots have seeds, but they do on the outside on the top."
Gregerson discussed interesting vegetable facts with hundreds of students during the annual Farm to Table event Thursday at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds.
More than 520 fifth-graders from Coeur d'Alene and Lakeland school districts, as well as Post Falls kids on Wednesday, spent a day at the fairgrounds learning just how the food they eat gets to their table.
Professionals and volunteers from the community shared their agricultural knowledge at 17 different stations including water quality and aquatic invertebrates, honeybees, vegetables and seeds, wheat, soil, pollination and more.
The students were enthusiastic as they participated in hands-on activities, like making their own butter and peering through field microscopes to have a better look at tiny creatures that live in water.
“We love the cows,” said Garwood student Skyler Andersen.
Several older kids worked as volunteers to guide the fifth-graders to their stations.
Miss Gem State Stampede Alex Sheets, a Timberlake High School junior, was one of the Farm to Table guides. This was her third year volunteering.
Sheets said it's a beneficial event because it helps the younger students to "realize where their food is coming from."
"They sit down and they eat, but they never think about beforehand what’s going on behind the scenes before it gets to their plate," she said.