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Do You Know an Outstanding Volunteer or Volunteering Program?
If you know of people or organizations that have made exceptional volunteering efforts to educate about agriculture, the Foundation wants to hear about it. Email us your story at [email protected] and include some pictures for us to use OR Nominate them at www.agfoundation.org, under What We Support-Volunteers. 
From City Girl to Serious about Ag Education

Tracy Duffield of the New Jersey Farm Bureau Women's Leadership Committee was not always a farm girl. She was born and raised in a city just 10 minutes from Philadelphia, surrounded by sidewalks and row houses.  Although she never regretted living there, she immediately fell in love with the farming lifestyle when she married her farming husband.

 

Years later, when Tracy's children informed her about the questions and misconceptions that children at school had about farm life such as asking: "Do you have electric?" or "Do you drive cars?" Tracy realized there was a real need to educate students about agriculture.  

 

Tracy said: "I wanted to make sure that other children, who are not raised in a rural area, would also see the importance of farming and appreciate how our food gets to our plate."  

 

Through the years Tracy has worked hard to coordinate several agricultural literacy programs; but Tracy's most successful program thus far has to be her Children's Charity Garden. 

 

Every April for the last 14 years Tracy has visited classrooms where she helps students to plant squash seeds and talk to them about how planting works on her farm.

 

Along with planting the seeds, Tracy has used the Foundation's 2010 Book of the Year, Seed, Soil, Sun, as a teaching tool.  The book is very popular with the students and teachers.

 

Later, after the seeds they planted together germinate and sprout, the students visit Tracy's farm, at no cost, to transplant the squash in the Children's Charity Garden. After their day of planting students are given a tour of the farm, and participate in an interactive skit called: "The Many Hats a Farmer Wears."   

 

During the skit students learn how many hats a farmer has to wear during the day in order to get his work done. They read a story about how a farmer has to be a mechanic, scientist, vet, nutritionist, meteorologist and bookkeeper all in one!

 

The project finishes during the second week of the July when some of the students return with their parents and siblings to harvest the squash. All of the squash that is harvested is donated to the "Farmers Against Hunger Program"  a charitable program in the area.

 

This program reaches many students and families throughout the year. It is presented in six elementary schools, with approximately 120 students at each school, therefore exposing 700 students to a farm from the district each year. It is Tracy's hope that this program will help the students to appreciate a family owned preserved farm in their township as well as support local charities.
 Thank you Tracy for being an outstanding example of a volunteer who educates about agriculture! If you know an outstanding volunteer email us at [email protected] and they could be featured in an Enewsletter.