MUNDARE, Alta. – Neil Dimmock remembers clearly the day he knew he had to get more involved in agriculture education.
The soft-spoken horseman was giving a group of inner city school kids a ride on a wagon pulled by one of his Percheron horses when a young boy said he didn’t know horses walked on all four legs. He thought horses only walked on their two hind legs like in the Disney movies.
“It proved to me the importance to go and educate kids,” said Dimmock who brought Roger, an 18-hand Percheron horse, and Max, a miniature pony, to the Parkland Conservation Farm’s Old McDonald days. Neither horse nor pony blinked an eye as the children swarmed around them like honeybees around a flower.
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“This gives people a chance to experience horses in a way they don’t normally get to,” said Dimmock, who farms most of his land with horses, and tried for a world record with a 46-horse hitch recently.
It’s a similar story for farmer and Lakeland college instructor Glen Smith, who has volunteered to talk to the mainly city students about cattle.
“I think it’s really important to have a connection between the farm and their food,” said Smith, who showed the children everything from ear tags to vaccinations.
Linda and Jim Sautner brought their Plains buffalo Bailey to the farm. They have become celebrities since Bailey caught the attention of newspapers and television shows around the world. The unusually quiet bison is often photographed in the couple’s Spruce Grove farmhouse.
Bailey has become an ambassador for the bison industry, Linda Sautner said.
“He’s the best salesman in the world,” said Sautner, who works at the bison centre of excellence. After each public appearance, calls about buffalo meat or the bison industry rise dramatically at the centre.
Showing Bailey to more than 400 school kids at the Parkland Conservation Farm is just one more way of raising awareness of the industry, she said.
“It’s the closest they’ll get and it shows them they’re not just a wisp of a creature out in Elk Island,” said Sautner, referring to the buffalo in the national park along Highway 16 east of Edmonton.
Kevin Cretzke, education co-ordinator for the Parkland Conservation Farm, said it’s become his mission to educate children and adults about agriculture.
“My goal is to have kids learn about the farm and agriculture so it’s not lost,” said Cretzke.
Each year he helps 3,000-4,000 kids learn about agriculture through one of the farm’s on-farm projects on agriculture, conservation or wetlands, or through in-school programs.
Melanie Scheuerman, a Grade 2 teacher from Sherwood Park, said teaching children about agriculture is a priority for her. Most of the children have never seen farm animals outside a petting zoo.
“It’s part of our heritage and I hope it’s part of our future,” said Scheuerman.
