Farmers’ breakfast draws crowd

By Fran Odyniec

editor@madison-press.com

Fran Odyniec — Staff

Some of the 500 folks who showed up for “Break­fast on the Farm” at the Yutzy Farm in Plain City line up for a cus­tomized omlet, sausage, and bis­cuit pre­pared by mem­bers of the Madi­son and Franklin coun­ties farm bureaus and culi­nary stu­dents from Tolles Career & Tech­ni­cal Center.

That’s how many folks attended the first ever “Break­fast on the Farm,” hosted by the farm bureaus of Madi­son and Franklin County, and held on the Yutzy Farm at the Kramer Home­stead on Converse-Huff Road in Plain City.

“We wanted to cre­ate an atmos­phere where the con­sumer could rub elbows with the pro­ducer,” said Dwight Beougher, pres­i­dent of the Franklin County Farm Bureau. “Less than two per­cent of the state’s pop­u­la­tion lives on the farm. So we bet­ter tell our story.”

The goal of the break­fast was to address the dis­con­nect between pro­ducer and farmer by let­ting peo­ple view first-hand what takes place on a farm, and in this case the Yutzy’s dairy farm. The Yutzy Farm is a five-generation farm with four of those gen­er­a­tions cur­rently work­ing the herd.

Break­fast was pre­pared and served under a huge tent set up across from the dairy barn. Mem­bers of the farm bureaus and culi­nary stu­dents from Tolles Career and Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter made omelets to order from ingre­di­ents found on a farm such as eggs, milk, ham, sausage, and vegetables.

“This is an effort to edu­cate peo­ple on ag,” said Den­nis Wilt, pres­i­dent of the Madi­son County Farm Bureau. “It’s just not live­stock and ani­mals but grains as well.”

Wilt flashed a sat­is­fied smile when he saw one con­sumer make a dis­cov­ery in the barn where infor­ma­tion on the var­i­ous aspects of farm­ing in Ohio was avail­able along with live dis­plays that included calves, two-day old piglets, roost­ers, hens, and rab­bits. Of course, the Yutzy dairy cows were out in the field next to the main barn giv­ing curi­ous looks to passers-by.

“There was a guy who had never seen a soy­bean before,” Wilt said. “He put his hand into the bucket of soy­beans (on dis­play). He thought that soy­beans grew underground.”

Chalk one up for the breakfast.

“This is good,” Wilt smiled.

He said that when peo­ple come up to him and ask, “Can we see big cows?” he just points to the Yutzy’s herd which has its fair share of “big cows.”

“The impact is more than what you think,” Wilt said of that sim­ple yet effec­tive encounter of the bovine kind.

Dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion the Madi­son County Farm Bureau recently made in Lon­don, Wilt asked the young audi­ence, “Where do you get beef?”

The answer, “At McDonald’s.”

Any won­der then why Wilt says, “Our num­ber one goal is to pro­mote all of agriculture.”

“The aver­age per­son is three times removed from the fam­ily farm,” said Jody Car­ney, orga­ni­za­tion direc­tor for the Ohio Farm Bureaus in Madi­son, Franklin, Delaware, and Union coun­ties. “That’s why we have events like this. When con­sumers are shop­ping for food, the con­nec­tion is there between Kroger and the farmer. Milk comes from Kroger, but they have to know how that milk gets into the bucket.”

Just out­side one of the barns, kids were busy tak­ing turns milk­ing “Bessie, the Buck­eye Cow.” Bessie, fes­tooned with OSU regalia, is a life-like replica of a cow and con­tains a sys­tem that dis­penses milk through an udder. The kids work the teats and milk squirts out into a bucket-like con­tainer that “recy­cles” the milk back into the sys­tem for another squirt.

Through con­ver­sa­tion with farm­ers at the break­fast, Car­ney said that con­sumers can learn how and why farm­ers do what they do. Farm­ers could eas­ily be spot­ted at the break­fast. They wore bright stick­ers that offered, “Ask me. I’m a farmer.”

“Ag is a 24–7 lifestyle,” she said, “espe­cially on a dairy farm. They’re milk­ing day and night.”

Saturday’s break­fast was only a start.

“Ag has done great,” Beougher said of the indus­try in Ohio that he con­sid­ers is the great­est thing going for the state and the nation. “But we have been ter­ri­ble at com­mu­ni­cat­ing. We have our work cut out for us.”

He indi­cated that pre­sen­ta­tions by farm bureaus to schools, ser­vice, fra­ter­nal, and church orga­ni­za­tions around Ohio are key to cre­at­ing increased aware­ness and improved under­stand­ing of what farm­ers pro­vide the state and the world.

Car­ney pointed out that the mis­sion of the Farm Bureau is to go out and have open dia­log with consumers.

“With an event like this,” she said of the break­fast, “we can get them out on the farm and meet the fam­i­lies (that pro­duce food), see the ani­mals, and how we care for them. They can explain why such and such meets cer­tain spec­i­fi­ca­tions and can learn how much respon­si­bil­ity and ded­i­ca­tion there is on the farm.”

Fran Odyniec is edi­tor of The Madi­son Press.

Posted by Fran Odyniec on Jul 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.