SHARON, Pa. (WKBN) – This week, the Community Food Warehouse of Mercer County is hosting field trips for the county’s first graders.
More than 700 students get to experience what the Warehouse calls “Farm Day in Town” and learn about the importance of growing and eating their fruits and veggies.
Sarah Worthington is the development manager of the Community Food Warehouse. She says she wants to inspire kids to start their own gardens.
“A lot of these kids may only know it as it comes out of a can. Maybe they’ve never seen a full carrot with a stem on it to know how it grows in the ground. Or that potatoes grow eyes and then that’s what grows other potatoes,” says Worthington.
Students also get to sample homemade vegetable soup, apple butter on whole grain bread and freshly churned butter.
“The hope is, of course, that these kids are going to grow up and they’re going to understand how important food is to the body, and good whole food,” says Worthington.
Cathy Vorisek is the instructor in the Mobile Agriculture Unit on site. She teaches the students where their pizza ingredients come from.
“When the kids come in, they walk out and they say, ‘Gee, I didn’t know pepperoni comes from a pig,'” says Vorisek.
Each mobile agriculture unit has a theme. Posters line the walls to introducing students to career options in the field of agriculture.
“[There] are all different aspects of farming that we don’t really think about. We think about, you know, cows and pigs and sheep and cleaning the barns,” says Vorisek.
She also teaches how farms play a role in areas not commonly thought of.
“Without farms, we wouldn’t have our clothes. Because we get cotton from cotton plants. We get wool from sheep. We get leather for our shoes from the cows,” says Vorisek.
At the end of their visit, the students get their own seeds to take home.