Seasons Greetings NHAITC Friends,

     This is our annual appeal  for your donations to fertilize NHAITC so that we can staff our office so generously provided by our NH Farm Bureau at their location  and continue our mission of cultivating understanding and appreciation of agriculture in our youngsters.   This past year we have more than doubled our outreach and  more than tripled our exposure in the case of the Ag Literacy program in our schools, mostly through tremendous volunteer help.  We want to multiply  again.
     Hold on to your hats while you open your hearts and hands for 2011, because  we are poised at the gate to blow open one of the granite state's best kept secrets - NH Ag In The Classroom. 
     We have hired Ruth Smith as our State Coordinator.  She comes charged with the essential experience in grant writing, teaching, exhibiting, tech savvy, plus a long-time devotion to sustainability, conservation, and  the general  idea that we all need to work together to care responsibly for ourselves, our fellow creatures, and our world.    Ruth is passionate in a just plain, what my dad would call, "horse sense" way about how indispensible it is for our citizens, leaders, and future policy makers to have some comprehension of farming, that natural connectedness that we have lost because so many folks are now several generations removed from the land.  We are not trying to make farmers of everyone. We plan to continue  assembling learning kits and packets, and aligning curricula to state standards, but our bigger service  will lie more in being  able to "show and tell"  how to point and click in order to find, access, and duplicate  the incredible amount of material that has already been and is being invented, rather than reinventing stuff. Furthermore, we  intend to  return to presenting teacher workshops,  and  we will work to promote our services  and resources.
      We plan more county School to Farm activities and are looking for places to hold them.  We are looking for a volunteer representative in every school to receive newsletters and   regularly plant our Food For Thought to teachers and administrators; home school organizations, too.  We will continue to build relationships with commodity groups, designing units about their products with them to ensure accuracy and appropriateness.
     In a couple of weeks we will begin  to have a little more light each day.  We ask you to make contributions to NHAITC so that we can help bring  a brighter and earlier dawn to the understanding and appreciation of the roles  all the components of agriculture have in our lives.  Do you know that "All jobs rely on one of two industries - mining and agriculture?" (Mike Rowe at National FFA convention , see blog "The Future of Farming".) We need financial assistance to be able to pay  reasonable  wages and expenses to actually accomplish all these objectives,  supplementing the time already being contributed  by our devoted volunteers.
      Please help us paint colorful  sunrises in NH classrooms.   

                                               Humbly,                      
                                    Jozi Best
                                             President       

P.S.  If you are not already a member of NH Farm Bureau you can help all of us by becoming a member today. Membership is NOT for farmers only! 

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DONATION CHECKS MAY BE MADE PAYABLE TO NHAITC and mailed to 295 Sheep Davis Rd., Concord, NH  03301- Thank you!