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The Coffee County Farm Bureau celebrated National Ag Day Tuesday, March 19 by providing an educational opportunity for the county’s youngest residents.

“It is important, farmers are a dying breed and there is no other way to grow future farmers other than to get these kids involved in agriculture and let them learn about where their meat comes from and where their milk comes from, their eggs come from,” Agency Manager Brad Davenport said.

The event helps teach those that believe everything in their home kitchen originated at a grocery store see the earlier stages of where their food comes from.

“We wanted to celebrate an Ag Day to give them an opportunity to come out here and learn a little bit about it and give them a chance to drink some MTSU Creamery Chocolate milk,” Davenport said.

Different mockup displays were set up in the Farm Bureau’s Corral Room, including model trees where children could pick apples, see how to milk a cow and gather eggs from the henhouse.

Elaine Weaver was on hand with a scale-model of a modern pig barn. Weaver and her family are longtime farmers in the county, raising pigs and sheep as well as row crops.

“Agriculture makes life possible,” Weaver said. “Without agriculture we wouldn’t have food, clothing, shelter and so we need to teach our younger generation where their food comes from because there are not as many farmers as there used to be.”

“They just need to know that we grow a healthy product to help make life possible,” she added.

Jania Richards said her mom Penny Howe works at Coffee County Farm Bureau and she decided to bring her two sons to the event.

Page Howe said he believes having activities that introduce kids to farming is important.

“I think it is a great chance to teach people about how all the food that we eat at a restaurant comes from the store comes from the ground somewhere,” he said. “We have to keep this stuff going and people learning about it.”

The event also featured a selection of tractors and other farm equipment on loan from TriGreen Equipment, allowing kids to get an up-close look at some of the tools of the trade, while live animals were also a part of the event.

Farm Bureau Board member Mack Raper said the pigs and sheep were on loan from Weaver Farms for the day, while the calves were loaned by A.J. Teal.

“I’m just trying to be here to help support the kids and teach a little about agriculture,” Raper said. “So many kids don’t understand where it all comes from and seeing the baby animals and stuff gives them an opportunity to see some life.”

Raper said education is a major objective of the Farm Bureau.

“That is our big thing, we want to put the education out there,” he said.