Farm close-up

MOSES LAKE — The first graders pleaded, and they commanded, but that pig refused to listen.

“Pig, come here,” the first graders shouted. “Please come here. Wake up, pig.”

The pig was lazing in his pen, enjoying a warm fall afternoon, and he was not interested in being petted by the first-graders. It took a nudge from his owner to persuade him to cross the pen.

Pigs and apples, sheep and tractors, potatoes and honeybees and the life cycle of plants were among the topics at First Grade Farm Day 2022, held Tuesday at the Grant County Fairgrounds. It’s a project of the Moses Lake High School Future Farmers of America chapter and some MLHS agriculture and science classes.

Dylan DuVall and Tobias Smith were part of the team talking about chickens, and they said the goal is to teach children a little bit about agriculture.

“We want them to know what to feed chickens,” Smith said.

“How to treat animals,” DuVall said.

“And to have a good time, really,” Smith said.

DuVall went to first grade in Moses Lake, and he remembered First Grade Farm Day.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

Jonathan Bradley, who was on the team talking about tractors, said he remembered Farm Day too.

“My favorite station that I remember – I don’t remember what it was called, but they talked about fishing and hunting,” he said.

The FFA students at the time displayed antlers and had pictures of some of the fish they’d caught.

“That was just a really cool experience,” Bradley said.

Andrew Nava also is a Farm Day alumnus, but his memories weren’t so vivid.

“All I remember is, there was a cow,” Nava said. “It was a while ago.”

“Many, many years ago,” Smith said.

It’s changed locations since Wyatt Cole was in first grade, but the basic format is the same.

“It was pretty much just like this,” Cole said.

First-graders moved from station to station, planting plants, petting the animals, and getting an order of french fries, donated and served by employees from the JR Simplot processing facility.

“I remember the french fries best,” Cole said.

The presenters started with three topics of interest, researched them and presented the options to the teachers.

“We had to write scripts,” Cole said.

Sometimes students didn’t have a choice, like the team illustrating the life cycle of plants.

“It got assigned to us,” said Jesus Vargas.

The team came up with a pretty snappy presentation regardless. They started in unison, with Vargas counting down.

“One, two, three,” he said.

“Hey kids,” the team chorused.

Other teams chose their own. Bradley and Nava said everybody else seemed to be doing presentations on animals or plants, so they opted for machinery. They had two tractors on display.

“We decided it would be really awesome for the kids to see, and maybe even go in,” Bradley said.

Some of the children climbed right into the tractor, but others were a little scared of something so big, he said.

Children don’t always know a lot about agriculture, especially the role mechanics and technology play in food production. Nava said the team’s goal was to give children a taste of the way a farm operates.

“Basically all of our fruits and vegetables revolve around tractors,” Nava said.

The first-graders did learn something, at least at the potato presentation. Jonathan Castro explained that people may think all plants grow from seeds, but that’s not the case for potatoes.

“They grow from little pieces of potato, or from really small potatoes,” Castro said.

“Oh,” said a first grader, in a tone of discovery.

The honeybee station gave first-graders a chance to win a crown, and one was sure he knew the answer when the class was asked the name of female honeybees.

“Um,” he said. “Um, um, um, um – mom bees.”

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.