City students learn farming ways

ROPING PRACTICE: Rachel Bader, a third-grader from Columbia Elementary School in Redding, learns to swing a lariat loop at a roping dummy during a Farm City Day field trip.

Last Wednesday, Sept. 30, the Shasta County Farm Bureau held its annual Farm City Day Field Trip for third-graders from throughout the county.

Happy Valley Primary School students attended along with Prairie Elementary School youths. FFA students from local high schools including Anderson and West Valley volunteered their time to take the younger children around to different learning and demonstration stations.

"We have high school student leaders guiding the kids to each station," said Julie Wold of the Shasta County Farm Bureau. "We have 26 high school students for 26 third grade classes from 11 schools, and there are about 549 students in attendance."

Attendance for the event is up with approximately 300 more students attending this year than last year.

"I love the FFA and wanted to show the third graders how much fun it is," said Enterprise High School sophomore Kayla Ketchum.

"I didn't know about FFA until I was put into the class by accident my freshman year. I saw how much fun it was and wanted to share that with the third graders," said Axel Mussmann, a sophomore at Enterprise High School.

Both Ketchum and Mussmann helped youths going through the giant corn maze.

There were 13 different stations with groups going to 10 of them. Topics covered at the various stations included honeybees, goats, dairy, beef, small animals, water, insects, forestry, wildlife, roping, rangelands and the giant hay maze.

The purpose of this event is to teach children about agriculture and the role it plays in their daily lives, their community, and how they can continue to help agriculture remain in Shasta County.

"I'm out here helping out with roping and getting kids exposed to agriculture. I've been explaining why we rope the cattle in order to doctor them and also the sport aspect like team roping," said Adam Davy, a director for the Tehama County Cattlemen's Association.