| Indiana county hosts annual soil and water conservation day |
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| By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent
DARLINGTON, Ind. — Armed with nothing but a magnifying glass and their curiosity, the fourth graders rose to the task of finding one adult, one “teenage” and one baby worm in a cup of dark soil handed to them.
Within minutes, the children were captivated by the slimy, squirming invertebrates that were dangling from their fingertips. “It was pretty gross,” Emily Homsher, a fourth grader from New Market, Ind., said about the experiment.
Emily was one of about 550 fourth graders who participated in the Montgomery County Soil and Water Conservation District’s (SWCD) annual field days Sept. 4-5.
In addition to learning about worms and composting, the young students got to play games and conduct experiments related to wildlife, wetlands, forestry, insects, water quality and the water cycle at eight different stations around the farm.
“We try to touch on the main topics that relate to conservation,” said Kenny Cain, who hosted the event at the Cains’ family farm near Darlington, Ind. “It’s all about the environment and how we can make it better.”
Cain is involved with the SWCD in Montgomery County, and the family has hosted the conservation field days for the past 10 years. The family’s corn and soybean fields are 100 percent no-till and Cain said conservation is a guiding star for the farm.
“My personal mission is to leave this soil and water in better shape than I found them,” he said.
The field days have become so popular they usually have full participation from all schools in Montgomery County. And according to Stan Covey, a teacher at Sugar Creek Elementary School, the conservation theme ties in well with the fourth graders’ curriculum, since all the topics covered during the field days are found in the kids’ science books.
“We talk about it (the field days) ahead of time and they get really psyched up when they get here,” Covey explained. “They talk about it for the whole rest of the school year.”
Covey has attended the field days for six years and said the event is well organized and enjoyable for the children.
“It’s very beneficial, a lot of hands-on experiments,” he said. “The kids can actually see exactly what’s going on.”
At the station that dealt with water quality, Don Emmert with the Tippecanoe County SWCD showed the kids some of the species that live in or near ponds. The first few searches with a fisher’s net turned up snail shells, dragonflies, mayflies and a stonefly.
“The kids are doing great. They love getting their hands dirty and looking at the critters that we pulled up this morning,” said Emmert.
The topics of the field days usually stay the same, but the presenters vary. This year, some 30 volunteers – including a couple local FFA chapters – plus teachers and a few parents, helped pull off the event successfully.
“A lot of times teachers are restricted with how many field trips they can take in a year, and this is one they don’t want to miss,” said Dan Dunten, a district support specialist with the Division of Soil Conservation at the Indiana State Department of Agriculture.
The students would probably agree.
Fourth grader Emily Homsher said she really liked the conservation station that talked about wetland habitats.
“We got to make our own little habitat and stick fake things like frogs and dragonflies in it,” she said.
Kenneth Beikman from Ladoga Elementary School in Ladoga, Ind. was more into digging for worms and looking at the big beetles at the entomology station.
“I didn’t know there were such humongous beetles,” he said, notably impressed.
This farm news was published in the Sept. 12, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/12/2007 |
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