CAFNR show-and-tell offers hands-in experience
The College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and MU's South Farm showed off its many facets Saturday at the South Farm Showcase.
Published Oct. 2, 2007
Thousands of people drive past MU's South Farm every day, Marc Linit said, but he also said he wonders just how many know what happens there.
Linit, the associate dean of research and extension at the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, said he was pleased to see that so many people came out on Saturday to the South Farm Showcase to find out for themselves.
Ten minutes away from campus by car, the farm is home to soybeans, sorghum, apples and insects, among other flora and fauna. A research park is being built on it, and undergraduates often visit for on-site classes.
But Saturday, things were different. Children, parents, faculty, staff and students converged at the farm between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. for a hands-on — and hands-in — picture of CAFNR's varied doings.
The college had rounded up entertaining elements from several of its departments and bundled them into six areas on the farmland. Visitors were shuttled to the areas, or stops, by hayride.
The first stop was Main Street, a paved road on which CAFNR-affiliated organizations and companies had set up tents. One of the most popular tents was that of Tiger Garden, under which kids stood and decorated pumpkins for the upcoming holiday. But grown-ups were rare there; plenty hovered a few tents away, at the Missouri Wines tent, under which samples were being downed.
"We're wanting to tell people about us," Tiger Garden employee Susan Nack said. "But the kids are the ones that are drawing, so the adults can hear about our shop. We wanna pull them in."
The second stop, the children's barnyard, featured one of the most popular attractions at the showcase: a cow with a hole in it. People were allowed to put on arm's-length gloves, stick a hand inside the cow and feel feed being digested in its four stomachs.
Cows like this one are technically known as fistulated, but professor Jim Williams, who moderated the demonstration, likes to call them "glass cows," because people can look inside of them. Researchers use the holes to test the digestibility of feeds.
Williams, a professor of animal sciences, said he noticed that few students showed at the showcase.
"We don't advertise enough," he said.
But students weren't completely absent. Scores of CAFNR students buzzed around in yellow T-shirts and volunteered at the showcase.
Four members of MU's Forestry Club were themselves an attraction. They were seen preparing for an upcoming tournament, the 56th Annual Midwestern Foresters Conclave. They were practicing the speed chop, in which participants ax through a piece of wood, and the bolt toss, in which they test how far they can hurl a heavy log.
At one point 11-year-old Cory Ketchum wandered over to the bolt-tossing area. Cody Campbell, a senior fisheries and wildlife and forestry major, helped Ketchum toss a bolt for the first time.
"I kinda helped him throw it," Campbell said.
Entomology was the focus of another busy stop. A race of tropical cockroaches took place at one station. In a nearby field, children ran around in fields with sweep nets, attempting to catch soldier beetles, butterflies and other insects. Every now and then, students would run over to Lisa Meihls, a Ph.D. candidate in entomology, and ask for help with transferring their finds from their sweep nets to Ziploc bags. Meihls transferred tirelessly.
"It's just good public relations," Meihls said.