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Oklahoma 4-H celebrates 100 yearsThe official birthday of Oklahoma 4-H is October 10, and Oklahoma 4-H is celebrating its centennial this year. In 1909, researchers at Oklahoma's ag school (now OSU) had found that youth were more likely than adults to experiment with the new agricultural discoveries coming out of the ag research stations. Read more
Corn maze in honor of Oklahoma 4-H centennial at P-Bar Farm near Hydro Red Dirt Groundbreaker: William BentleyAfter the the boll weevil destroyed crops in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, the US Department of Agriculture appointed Seamon Knapp to help farmers change the way they farmed. He hired William Bentley to organize demonstration trains to work with farmers in Oklahoma. Read more. Halloween originated as End of Harvest CelebrationYou might not recognize it from the way we celebrate now, but Halloween originated as a Celtic festival celebrating the end of the harvest season. Plan your own end-of-harvest festival by introducing fresh fruits and veggies from the garden in place of traditional Halloween candy. The following poem describes a Halloween custom from the time when Halloween was an end-of-harvest festival.
Ag in PoetryTheme in Yellow, Carl Sandburg
When the Frost is on the Punkin (James Whitcomb Riley) |
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October is National Pork MonthIn 2007, hogs and pigs ranked number 5 of all Oklahoma agricultural commodities, with a value of $549 million.
Swine
Facts Don't call it swine flu!Oklahoma pork producers are trying to get the word out. You will not catch the H1N1 virus by eating pork. US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in April that the virus should not be called "swine flu" because ...Read more Two Poems About Pigs
October 12 is Columbus DayColumbus Day is significant to American pork producers because swine came to the New World with Columbus on his second voyage. In his narrative of that voyage, Michele de Cuneo reported that pigs, in particular, "grew over there to a superlative degree." In addition to pigs, Columbus loaded his fleet of 17 ships with horses, cows, oxen, sheep, goats, hens, dogs and cats. He brought wheat seed and plants, barley, radishes, onions, peas, melon, sugar cane, broad beans, lettuce, leeks and parsley "to try out the ground." Seeds of Change - Smithsonian Institute website exploring the impact of Columbus' voyage, especially the exchange of New World and Old World foods. World Food Day is October 16Isn't it ironic? Oklahoma is one of six states in the US with an obesity rate of 30 percent or more, but we also rank eighth in the nation in the number of people per capita who are hungry. One in every five of our children lives in poverty and is at risk of going to bed hungry.How does that happen? Read more.
"I long ago decided that the first human right for which people fight is the right to eat. " -Eleanor Roosevelt Norman Borlaug, Hunger FighterOn September 12, Nobel Prize winner Norman E. Borlaug died. Borlaug received the peace prize in 1970, primarily for his work in reversing food shortages in India and Pakistan in the 1960s. Before Borlaug introduced his high yield agriculture techniques, mass starvations had been predicted in many parts of the world. Read more. |
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Ag Art for October
Girl With Pigs, Thomas Gainsborough (1782) Thomas Gainsborough was an English painter who studied in London and started his career as a portrait painter. With Joshua Reynolds he was the dominant British portraitist of the second half of the 18th Century. He painted with light and rapid brush strokes and delicate colors. Gainsborough painted more from his observations than from formal academic rules. He became a favorite portraitist of the royal family. Gainsborough sometimes said that while portraiture was his profession landscape painting was his pleasure. He was one of the originators of the 18th Century British landscape school. In later years he painted pastoral subjects like the one above. Gainsborough painted several pictures of this scene. In another version one of the little pigs has a hoof as well as his snout in the milk. Gainsborough had overheard a farmer criticizing the painting above because he said "nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but one of them has a foot in the trough." On hearing this opinion, Gainsborough went to work on an identical painting to reflect the farmer's expertise. Background, discussion questions and activities, with P.A.S.S. |
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Oklahoma Ag in the Classroom is a program of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, 4-H Youth Development, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and the Oklahoma State Department of Education.