Grown IN Indiana: Bringing farming into classrooms is more than cows, sows and plows

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https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environment/2022/08/31/indiana-students-run-cattle-farm-grow-veggies-for-lunch-fix-tractors/9719906002/

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Jillian Ressler remembers sitting in her elementary class looking out the window in the direction of the playground. Like most young children, she could not wait until recess. 

As soon as lunch was over and the back doors opened, Ressler was flying through them. But she ran right past the slide and the monkey bars and the swings. Instead, she found herself standing on the edge of a fenced-in area that sits in the center of the triangle formed by the Maconaquah elementary, middle and high schools. 

Ressler was mesmerized. 

“We were elementary kids and always saw them outside,” said Ressler, now a high school freshman. “We were always so excited to come out and be with them and for our chance to get to work with them someday.” 

The “them” in question: Cows.

And Ressler got her wish. She now works with the cows as part of the school's curriculum. 

The Maconaquah school system, located just north of Kokomo and not far from the Grissom Joint Air Reserve Base, has a unique program where students operate their own small farm raising cows and calves. That’s right, the middle school students are in charge. 

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While the Maconaquah set-up may be rare, there's nothing new about bringing agriculture into classrooms across Indiana and turning students into budding farmers. 

Whether that’s with livestock, row crops or fruits and vegetables, these programs teach students not just about agriculture but also the food system, natural resources and leadership. Agriculture education today goes beyond just teaching students how to be farmers, it also is helping train a new generation of scientists, technicians and engineers, nutritionists and more. 

There are a few other schools in Indiana with cows and livestock, but what Maconaquah Schools does is special. It was the third school system in the state to get cattle, according to John Sinnamon, the middle school agriculture teacher. But it now is the only school with a calf-cow operation, he said, or one where they have a permanent herd of cows and are breeding calves. 

Maconaquah started with just four cows but now has about 20 cattle on campus. The program is on its second generation of cows bred from its original herd. 

“We went from an idea and baby steps, and then boom,” Sinnamon said. “We grew it and started it with just a few feeder cows.”

The program began about eight years ago, when middle schoolers put together a business plan about their interest in starting a cattle farm on campus. The students and school then worked with local farmers to secure some donated cattle, said middle school principal Craig Jernagan. 

The fenced-in area where the cows graze was originally the soccer fields, and is “right out their back door.” 

The students helped raise money to build a barn to house the cattle on campus five years ago. The school also works with a company to breed the calves — the middle-schoolers learn about the genetics and insemination process and then pick out the semen they want to use based on the animals’ traits.

“All of this is student-led,” Jernagan said. “We even let the students do the research on what type of cattle they wanted based on their temperment, and we bought them locally here in Indiana and have grown it from there.”

Now, the whole community is involved. 

The school board jumped in about three years ago after the program received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The leaders bought nearly 50 acres of land behind the school. The land has been planted in about half hay and half corn to help feed the cows. Parents have also chipped in and provided equipment to help with planting and harvesting. 

The ultimate goal is to be more self-sufficient and cost-effective by raising additional crops to feed the cows, and to get students more involved on the crop side of things. 

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A great story about a great community.