Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors
Teacher Materials
The lesson plans that follow are designed as introductory and concluding activities for students who are going to see the exhibition Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors. The plans can be adapted to many age groups. In addition, you will find glossary terms, supplementary activity suggestions, and a list of readings and websites, focusing on farming, for children.
Table of Contents
Pre-Visit Lesson Plans………………………………………………………………………3
Post Visit Lesson Plans……………………………………………………………………...9
Additional Activity Suggestions……………………………………………………………16
Glossary…………………………………………………………………………………….25
Suggested Readings and Web Sites for Children…………………………………………..28
Pre-Visit Lesson #1: Perceptions of Farm Life
Objectives
Materials
Student Instruction
Before this lesson, ask students to bring an example of a symbolic object from home (they may bring an object, picture, or photograph). Explain that a symbol is a physical object that stands for an idea, value, or feeling. Illustrate this concept with several examples of familiar symbols you’ve brought to class.
On the day assigned for students to bring their symbolic objects, spend some time discussing each object and what students think it stands for. When the concept of the symbol is well understood, tell students that the class is going to the museum to visit the exhibition Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors. Ask students: What do you predict this exhibition is about? What do you predict you will see in this exhibition?
Discuss with students how farms can be powerful symbols for Americans. They convey ideas and feelings about rural life, working with the land, simplicity, hard work, and more.
Create with your students a list of farm objects or images that are symbolic (weather vane, barns, various farm animals, fields of grain, farmhouse, tractor, farmer, etc.). Ask students what ideas, values, and feelings are symbolized by these objects or images. Discuss why farms and farming are such potent symbols in our culture. What do these objects tell us about our values or our history?
Student Activities/Products
Pass out a copy of the Farm Life worksheet that follows this lesson to each student. Tell them to fill out the worksheet while they tour the exhibition.
For homework, assign students to identify two examples of farms or farming used as symbols in our popular culture. They can look for ads, product packaging, signs, stories, poems, paintings, photos, cartoons, or Web sites related to farming. Students may also survey adults to find out what ideas, values, or feelings they associate with farming. Students will then write a brief paragraph about their examples, explaining their symbolic value. Ask students to bring their examples to class, if possible.
Assign students to produce a creative piece in which they use their symbols. Students can develop an ad, product package, sign, story, poem, picture, or cartoon.
Extension
Send the students’ creative pieces to the museum, along with a letter describing the assignment.
Extension for Older Students
Examine American Gothic by Grant Wood (go to www.uwm.edu/Course/448-192-001/art23.html). In this painting, Wood imagined a farmer and his daughter standing in front of a house with a Gothic window. His sister, Nan, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, served as models for the figures in the painting. The man was given a pitchfork to hold because Wood wanted him associated with the old-fashioned haying done without technology. Also, the pitchfork symbolized masculinity, the devil, and farming and echoed the oval shape of the peoples’ faces and the repeated lines of the Gothic window. Wood worked on the painting for only two months. Discuss the painting’s enduring popularity and symbolic qualities. Ask students to draw a parody of American Gothic. For parodies of American Gothic, go to http://cc.ysu.edu/~satingle/AmSt%202601/parodies.htm. For examples of student take-offs on the painting, go to www.wyckoffschools.org/eisenhower/teachers/olejarz/digitalimaging/gothic2003/index.html.
Farm Life
Find a photograph or object from the exhibition Farm Life that best represents to you the aspects of farm life below. Write the name of the photograph or object in the space, then briefly explain how each object or photograph captures this characteristic for you.
Pre-Visit Lesson #2: Neighbor to Neighbor
Objectives
Materials
Student Instruction
Divide students into groups of four. Using only newspapers and masking tape, have students design and construct any kind of outfit for one member of their group. Ask students to designate one person for whom they’ll construct the outfit. Set a time limit of about ten minutes for the project.
After students have constructed and modeled the outfits, ask them to discuss why they chose a specific idea, how the outfit was constructed, what problems they faced as they worked on the outfit. Ask them to consider doing this job alone. Would it have been possible? Why not? What are some other jobs they do every day that are difficult to do alone?
Inform students that they are going to see the exhibition Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors. American farmers have always realized that their lives and fortunes are bound together, and by sharing, they improved their well-being. In fact, cooperation was an important part of survival for all farmers before about 1960 (when machines and technology made difficult farm tasks easier to handle). Neighbors helped each other complete large tasks, such as threshing grain or building barns. Rural communities banded together to build town buildings such as churches and schools and took on many of the duties we now think of as responsibilities of our governments, such as firefighting, grading roads, putting in poles for power lines, and building bridges.
Farmers combined fun with their work whenever they could. Work-play parties helped get a big job done quickly and gave people a chance to see distant neighbors, share news and ideas, and have some fun. Work-play parties were held to thresh grain before threshing machines did that job, to husk corn, to quilt, to raise a barn, to saw wood, to fill a silo, or other jobs that required a lot of help from neighbors. Farmers called this informal arrangement "exchange work." Tell the class: Before we go to the museum, we’re going to explore how people cooperated in the past and how they help each other today.
Ask students to consider the meaning of the old saying, "Many hands make light work." One of the major work and social times of the year for farmers in the past was the threshing season when neighbors banded together to complete the harvesting of grains such as wheat. Like people everywhere, farmers enjoyed getting together with friends so they could share jokes, news, stories, and ways of dealing with problems. But there was little free time for fun or socializing with so many chores to be done on the farm. Resourceful farmers found ways to get their work done and have some fun in the process.
Every member of the family worked hard to help when threshing teams were at their farm. Women had the task of preparing and serving the dinner to a crew of a dozen or more. It gave them a chance to share their best homemade breads, cakes, pies, and cookies. For women, threshing time helped maintain social relationships, as they often worked with family members or neighbors. It also allowed some women to showcase their culinary talents. Children helped to prepare and serve the food, in addition to carrying supplies and drinks to the workers.
Read aloud to the class Great Grandma Tells of Threshing Day by Verda Cross (if you cannot obtain a copy of this book from your local library or bookstore, the museum hosting Farm Life has a copy they may be willing to lend you).
Discuss with the class:
Today, we still hold work-play parties. Whether in a rural area or an urban neighborhood, these gatherings can be an efficient and money-saving way to do a special task. For example, the nonprofit organization Habitat for Humanity builds houses for people who cannot afford them. There are also work-play parties to build children’s playgrounds, paint homes, or beautify community buildings. In many neighborhoods, people plant and harvest community gardens together. Although people today do not always need these events to survive, they like to socialize with neighbors and take part in community life. People also value the chance to share creative ideas and useful social skills and to see the results in their work, as in a quilt, community garden, or playground. People continue to plan ways to work and play together.
Ask students: Do people still come together to get a big job done in our area? Brainstorm a list of examples of community cooperation. The list might include events like a community park clean-up, work for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, or benefits for victims of natural disasters. Ask: Do you think cooperation is still important in our communities today? Why or why not?
Ask students to think of a project that would help your school or community. For example, students could host a flower-planting party at your school or clean up the yard of an elderly person living in the community, celebrating with an ice cream social afterward. Ask students to write a letter to whomever is in charge of authorizing the project (the principal, the mayor, the community council, a store owner, a private home owner) outlining the purpose of the project and proposed work and festivities and requesting permission to host the project on their site. Students may want to consider emphasizing the value of cooperation being taught through this project.
Extensions
Mail the letters written by students suggesting a cooperative project. Choose a project from the positive responses to the letters and organize a work-play party.
Imagine you are participating in helping to thresh a neighbor’s grain. Write a story about the sights and smells, the labor, and the fun. Illustrate your story.
Post-Visit Lesson #1: Oral History Interview
Materials
Student Instruction
The exhibition Farm Life is filled with quotes from actual farmers that make the exhibition come to life. Volunteers at the Chippewa Valley Museum, the institution that originated Farm Life, interviewed more than eighty individuals between 1998 and 2004; their stories became the Farm Life exhibition. There is no better way to understand American farm life than to talk to someone who participated in it. Because farming is so important to our nation’s culture, many people have a story to tell about farm life. It might be a story about watching a calf being born, playing in a hayloft, or trying to put out a barn fire. Someone you know probably has a story about farming to share with you. Find out!
Recent history is fascinating because you can still meet and talk to people who have firsthand experiences. It is up to us to take advantage of these eyewitnesses to history before it is too late. Hearing stories about life on America’s farms from real farmers helps the words leap off the page and make their stories real.
Tell your students: You are going to be interviewing someone who lives or used to live on a farm and ask them to tell you about it. You must be well prepared for your interview. You’ll have to think of some questions you want to ask in advance and write them down. If you can, you should tape record your interview. Otherwise, take good notes. After the interview, you’ll review your tape or notes and decide which of the farm stories you heard that you like the best. You will write this story down and illustrate it, and then we’ll make a class book of all the stories we gathered about farm life. You can work individually on this project or in teams of two.
First, students must find someone to interview. Ask them to think of any friends or relatives who grew up on a farm or live on a farm now. Remember, women were farmers, too, and served key roles on the farm. As a class, brainstorm ways to find someone to interview. The list might include family members, neighbors, people from church, local agricultural groups, retirement facilities, etc.
If students do not have friends or relatives who had connections to farming, tell them to look on the Internet at www.fb.org/state/ for your state’s affiliate of the American Farm Bureau Federation. They can call your local chapter and find out if they can put students in touch with a farmer in your area. If students are unable to locate a farmer, they may choose to interview someone associated with agriculture in some other way (the supermarket business, food processing, etc.). Assign a deadline for turning in the name, address, and phone number of the proposed interviewee.
Help students to practice contacting interviewees by letter, phone, or e-mail to set up a time for the interview (the length of the interview depends on the age of your students). Ask them to make a follow-up call one or two days before the interview. Ask students to be sure to tell interviewees that this interview will be the basis of a story they write and illustrate and may be displayed at the museum hosting Farm Life.
In this activity, students will come up with questions to interview a local farmer. Ask students to develop a list of possible questions to ask during their interview. Brainstorm possible interview questions, such as:
After students have come up with a list of good interview questions, brainstorm some ideas about how to conduct a successful interview. These include:
Ask students to practice interviewing a fellow student. Ask them to select any topic that is appropriate to their interests and abilities. They will conduct an interview for five minutes, taking turns to be the interviewer and the interviewee. Then ask students to share their ideas about what they did well as an interviewer and how they could improve.
After they’ve practiced the interview process, explain to students what they will do with the interview they get: After you get home, play back the tape and choose one story that you liked best. Write out exactly what the person said in this story. Put the date of the interview and the name of the person you spoke to at the top of the paper. Now you have a firsthand account of what it’s like to live on a farm!
Set a deadline for teams to turn in a transcription of their favorite story from the interview. Emphasize that students do not have to transcribe the entire interview. Ask students to try to write the story down just like the person they interviewed told it to them. Have students illustrate the story. If possible, include a photo of the interviewee with the story.
Help students write a thank you letter to the interviewee; send along a copy of their transcribed and illustrated story to the interviewee.
Extension
Gather all the interviews into a class book and give copies to each farmer that contributed and/or a copy to the museum hosting Farm Life.
Post-Visit Lesson #2: Telling a Story with Photographs
Objectives
Materials
Student Instruction
Historic photographs have preserved information concerning the lives of American farmers in earlier times and into the present. Students can learn to use historic photographs as a tool to expand their understanding of American farm life past and present.
Before your class visits the exhibition Farm Life, tell students that they will have to choose two photographs from the exhibition to examine closely. Pass out a copy of the activity sheet "A Close-up View of Farm Life" to each student (follows this lesson).
Tell students: The exhibition you have just seen, Farm Life, records many of the daily activities of American farmers and looks at the communities they live in and the changes that have come about in farming over the last century. Discuss the worksheets students filled out at the museum and the images seen in the exhibition with the class:
Student Activities/Products
Ask students to create a photographic story of their daily lives. They should include shots of their daily routines, their work, their relaxation time, their troubles, and their joys.
Directions
If time permits, students should explain their posters for the class when the project is complete. Discuss with the class what investigators in the future might learn from the photographs displayed in each poster. Exhibit posters in the classroom.
Extension
Send the posters to the museum hosting Farm Life with a cover letter explaining the assignment.
Ask students to write a poem based on one of the two farm photographs they examined at the museum.
A Close-up View of Farm Life
The photographs in the exhibition Farm Life tell us a lot about the changes that farm families and their communities have undergone in the last one hundred years. Choose two photographs from the exhibition to examine closely and answer the following questions about each photograph.
What is the name of the photograph (just use the first three or four words)?
What do you see happening in the photograph?
Which main idea does this photograph seem to belong with? (circle one):
Farm families Farm communities Farm work
Look more closely at the photograph. Use one word to describe any of the following that are in the photograph:
Facial expressions:
Clothing:
Equipment:
What objects do you see?
Where was the photograph taken?
When was the photograph taken?
Use three words to describe the place pictured in the photograph.
What does this photograph tell you about farm life?
Based on this photograph, what changes do you think have occurred in farming since the photograph was taken?
A Close-up View of Farm Life
The photographs in the exhibition Farm Life tell us a lot about the changes that farm families and their communities have undergone in the last one hundred years. Choose two photographs from the exhibition to examine closely and answer the following questions about each photograph.
What is the name of the photograph (just use the first three or four words)?
What do you see happening in the photograph?
Which main idea does this photograph seem to belong to (circle one):
Farm families Farm communities Farm work
Look more closely at the photograph. Use one word to describe any of the following that are in the photograph:
Facial expressions:
Clothing:
Equipment:
What objects do you see in the photograph?
Where was the photograph taken?
When was the photograph taken?
Use three words to describe the place pictured in the photograph.
What does this photograph tell you about farm life?
Based on this photograph, what changes do you think have occurred in farming since the photograph was taken?
Additional Activity Suggestions
The simple, hands-on activities listed here are easy and fun for all ages. While the activities are geared primarily for children, they’re applicable to all ages .
Little House Stories
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House stories are beautifully illustrated in children’s editions from the My First Little House series published by HarperTrophy. Look at your local library or bookstore to locate these books, illustrated by Renee Graef.
Going to Town
Dance at Grandpa’s
A Little Prairie House
A Farmer Boy Birthday
Sugar Snow
Little House Birthday
County Fair
Prairie Days
Summertime in the Big Woods
Going West
Winter on the Farm
The Deer in the Woods
Christmas in the Big Woods
Winter Days in the Big Woods
Summertime in the Big Woods and Winter on the Farm are traveling with the educational materials that accompany this exhibition. Alternately, you could read a selection from any of the original books, such as "The Story of Grandpa and the Panther" from Little House in the Big Woods. If time permits, ask visitors to draw their favorite part of the story.
Make Butter in a Jar
The exhibition Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors focuses especially on Wisconsin dairy farming. This activity is a good supplement to this aspect of the exhibition.
Explain to visitors that butter is made from cream, a component of milk. Cream is lighter than the rest of the milk and floats to the top, where it can be skimmed off and packaged separately. One pound of butter is made from the cream found in ten quarts of milk.
The more butterfat milk contains, the more butter it will make. The Jersey breed of cattle produces milk with the highest percentage of butterfat. The Holstein breed gives the greatest quantity of milk, but with the lowest percentage of butterfat.
Today, most people buy commercially made butter at the supermarket. In the past, however, people made butter at home using a butter churn. A typical butter churn consisted of a container to hold the cream, which was then stirred briskly using a stick or paddle. The cream thickened as it was stirred, resulting in butter and buttermilk (the remaining liquid).
Materials
Directions
Plastic Bag Ice Cream
This activity is a good complement to the infomration about dairy farming that is part of the exhibition.
Until 1800, ice cream remained a rare and exotic dessert enjoyed mostly by the elite. Around 1800, insulated ice houses were invented. Manufacturing ice cream soon became an industry in America, pioneered in 1851 by a Baltimore milk dealer named Jacob Fussell. Like other American industries, ice cream production increased because of technological innovations, including steam power, mechanical refrigeration, the homogenizer, electric power and motors, packing machines, and new freezing processes and equipment. In addition, motorized delivery vehicles dramatically changed the industry. Due to ongoing technological advances, today's total frozen dairy annual production in the United States is more than 1.6 billion gallons.
Wide availability of ice cream in the late nineteenth century led to new creations. In 1874, the American soda fountain shop and the profession of the "soda jerk" emerged with the invention of the ice cream soda. In response to religious criticism for eating "sinfully" rich ice cream sodas on Sundays, ice cream merchants left out the carbonated water and invented the ice cream "Sunday" in the late 1890s. The name was eventually changed to "sundae" to remove any connection with the Sabbath.
Ice cream became an edible morale boost during World War II. Each branch of the military tried to outdo the others in serving ice cream to its troops. In 1945, the first "floating ice cream parlor" was built for sailors in the western Pacific. When the war ended, and dairy product rationing was lifted, America celebrated its victory with ice cream. Americans consumed more than twenty quarts of ice cream per person in 1946.
Materials (per person)
Directions
Mini-Greenhouse
Growing seeds indoors will give young visitors an appreciation for a farmer’s hard work in tending crops.
Materials
Directions
Favorite Farm Games
These fun games were often played by farm families of the past.
Corn Cob Darts (also called Whirly Cobs)
Shell the corn off a corn cob; break the end off the cob so the soft center is exposed. Put the quill end of two chicken or turkey feathers into the soft center. When you throw the cog, it will twist and whirl through the air. See who can throw it the farthest, or set up a bull’s-eye on the ground made of rope and see who can hit the center.
Marbles
Each player has some small marbles (known as alleys) and a few larger marbles (known as shooters). Create a large circle on the ground with masking tape. Each player puts four to six marbles in the circle. Players then take turns pitching or rolling their shooters in from outside the circle, trying to knock alleys out of the circle. The player keeps the alleys that are knocked out, and the player’s turn continues until he/she misses a shot. The winner is the player with the most marbles after all have been hit out of the circle. Traditionally, players get to keep the alleys they win, so make it clear that players are just borrowing these marbles while they play the game.
Drop the Handkerchief
Play with at least eight players, a handkerchief, and a small piece of folded paper. One player is designated "It" and gets the handkerchief. The other players form a circle. "It" walks around the outside of the circle slowly, chanting: "A tisket, a tasket, a green and yellow basket. I wrote a letter to my love and on the way I dropped it. A little child picked it up and put it in her pocket."
While chanting, "It" drops the handkerchief behind a player in the circle. That player picks up the handkerchief as quickly as possible and chases "It" around the circle. "It" tries to get back to the empty spot in the circle left by the chaser before being tagged. If "It" succeeds, the chasing player becomes the new "It."
Shepherd and Wolf
Play this game in a large, open area. One player is designated the Shepherd, another as the Wolf. The rest of the players are sheep. The sheep are stationed on one end, the Shepherd at the other. The Wolf is in the middle. The Shepherd calls the sheep by name, two or three at a time. The sheep must try to get to the Shepherd without being nabbed by the Wolf. The Wolf takes captured sheep to his den. The Shepherd takes the safe sheep to her/his fold. The Shepherd can rescue captured sheep by tagging them in the Wolf’s den when the Wolf is not looking. The Wolf can do the same with the sheep in the Shepherd’s fold.
The game is over when the last stray sheep makes a run. The winner is the Shepherd or the Wolf with the most captured sheep.
Dirt Cake
Start this activity by giving visitors a little information about soil. If you want to speak in farming terms, you have to use the term "soil." "Dirt" as a term is okay if you are speaking of cleaning house or trying to start a rumor about someone. But, if you want to impress a farmer, you must use "soil" when referring to the stuff in which plants grow and develop into cash crops.
Why is soil so important? Well, it’s the medium into which plants put their roots. You probably are already aware that there are different types of soil, but here’s the technical explanation. Soil type is defined by the amount of sand, silt, or clay present in a given sample as well as the texture or how it feels. It is produced by weathering of rock over a period of time. Five main types of soil may be identified and are defined by composition (if possible, show examples of each type of soil).
Humus is the dark, moist layer found on the top of a soil profile. This is because it is made up of dead and decaying matter and is fairly fertile because the decay process adds nutrients to the soil that plants love to soak up.
Gravel is made of particles larger than 2.0 mm. In other words, gravel contains highly visible rock particles or pebbles.
Sand is made of large particles, 0.02-2.0 mm in size. Sandy soil has less than 20 percent silt and/or clay. Water drains through sand very quickly.
Silt has particles that measure from 0.004-0.006 mm. The grains in silt look like tiny pieces of rock. Silt will generally float on the top of a layer of water and will take time to settle out of the mixture.
Clay is the stuff that pottery is made of. In terms of texture, it is made of particles smaller than sand, less than 0.002 mm in size. Clayey soil is made of at least 30 percent clay particles. Also, because of the small particulate size, water tends to puddle on clay soils.
Since there is no single soil type in all fields, or even within one field, farmers must know their growing area in terms of soil type, water retention, and nutrients available.
Now let your visitors make Dirt Cake!
Materials
Directions
Agriculture in Your Life
The USDA’s Web site, Ag in the Classroom, provides activity sheets that challenge young visitors to match products with their agricultural sources. To download copies of the activity sheets, go to the following sites and scroll until you find Activity Sheet A:
www.agclassroom.org/teacher/pdf/prairie/2_5/5_agInYourLife.pdf www.agclassroom.org/teacher/pdf/prairie/prek_1/5_AgInYourLife.pdf
Alternatively, have children name and draw the products we get from the following:
Agriculture in the Classroom Activities
The Illinois Farm Bureau has created several farm-related activities that coordinate perfectly with this exhibition. Go to http://www.agintheclassroom.org/060605/Teachers/Make%20&%20Takes/make_takes.html to find a list of activities, including:
Click on the desired activity to find complete instructions.
Ten Things Kids Want to Know About Farming
The video Ten Things Kids Want to Know About Farming is part of the educational materials traveling with the exhibition. It is twenty-two minutes long and is a good way to get kids thinking about farms and farming.
After viewing the video, ask kids to write down and illustrate their own questions about farming. For example, visitors may ask:
Ask a local farmer to visit your museum to answer these and other questions that kids have about farming. Display the illustrated questions in your museum.
If a farmer from your area is unavailable, find answers to some commonly asked farm questions at www.nps.gov/nace/oxhi/animals.htm.
"Name That Grain" Quiz
In this activity, visitors will guess the types of grain contained in five different storage containers.
Materials
Directions
Corn is an important renewable resource. There are thousands of uses for this valuable crop, not only as food for humans and livestock, but for many other products as well. These uses include:
Artifact Guessing Game
In this activity, visitors will guess the identity of five farm-related objects.
Materials
Directions
Glossary
Acre: A unit of area used in land measurement, equal to 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet (about the size of a football field).
Agronomy: The science of crop production and soil management.
Arable: Land fit for cultivation, as by plowing.
Bale: A large package of raw or finished material tightly bound with twine or wire and often wrapped.
Bee: A gathering of people to quickly and enjoyably complete a task like quilting, house framing, husking corn, or barn raising.
Bushel: A unit of volume or capacity used in dry measure and equal to 2,150.42 cubic inches (about the size of a round laundry basket).
Byproduct: Something produced in the making of something else.
Chaff: The husks of rye, oats, wheat, or other grains.
Combine: A machine that harvests and threshes grain at the same time.
Commodity: An article for trade or commerce, especially an agricultural or mining product, that can be processed and resold.
Cooperative: An organization started, run, and owned by the people who use its facilities or services.
Cradle: A harvesting tool that cuts and gathers grain.
Crop rotation: The practice of growing different crops in succession on the same land.
Cultivate: To cut and turn under weeds that grow between the rows of a crop.
Cutover land: Land that had been logged and then abandoned by the lumber companies.
Draft horse: Work horse that pulls heavy loads.
Drover: Person who drives a herd or flock of animals from one place to another, especially to market.
Feed grain: Any of several grains most commonly used for livestock or poultry feed, such as corn, sorghum, oats, rye, and barley.
Flail: A club, attached by a chain or rope to a pole, used to thresh grain.
Granary: A storage area for grain.
Harrow: A heavy wooden farm tool with spikes on one side, used to break up soil.
Hay: Various plants, such as clover, grass, and alfalfa, that are cut and dried for use as livestock feed.
Homogenization: Breaking up the fat in milk into tiny globs. This is done so that the cream in the milk will not rise to the top when milk is put in the refrigerator.
Horticulture: The science of growing flowers, fruit, vegetables, tress, or shrubs.
Livestock: Domestic animals kept for use on a farm or raised for sale and profit.
Milking parlor: A special room attached to the barn where the cows are milked.
Mow: The space in a barn where hay or grain is stored.
Organic farming: A production system that completely or mostly excludes the use of synthetically compounded fertilizers, pesticides, or growth regulators.
Outbuilding: Building that is separate from the main house.
Oxen: A pair of castrated bulls, used for pulling plows and wagons.
Pasteurization: Heating milk to around 180 degrees Fahrenheit for fifteen seconds to kill bacteria.
Processing plant: Place where milk is packaged and made ready for the supermarket. Also, the place where milk is made into ice cream, cheese, sour cream, yogurt, and other products.
Production: The amount of milk a cow or group of cows is giving.
Root cellar: A storeroom cut in the ground and roofed over to create a cool space for keeping produce, especially root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, beets, and turnips.
Shocks: Stalks of corn gathered and stood up in a field to dry.
Silage: Livestock food that has been stored in a silo to ferment.
Silo: Building used to store silage.
Straw: The stalks that remain after grain, such as wheat, rye, or oats, has been removed.
Thresh: To beat grain from chaff, usually with a flail, the treading of animals, or threshing machine.
Windrows: Raked rows of straw or hay set out to dry before storage.
Winnow: To separate grain from chaff.
Yeoman: A free person who cultivates his own land.
Suggested Readings and Web Sites for Children
Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and
Their Neighbors
A project of NEH on the Road, the Chippewa Valley Museum, and Mid America Arts Alliance.
Books
Artley, Bob. Book of Farm Chores. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 2002.
______. Once Upon a Farm. Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2000.
Bushnell, Jack. Farm Crossing: The Amazing Adventures of Addie and Zachary. Eau Claire, WI: Chippewa Valley Museum Press, 2004.
Cross, Verda. Great-Grandma Tells of Threshing Day. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman & Company, 1992.
Fowler, Allan. Living on Farms. New York: Children’s Press, 2000.
Gibbons, Gail. Farming. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.
Halley, Ned. Farm. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.
Kalman, Bobbie. Hooray for Dairy Farming. New York: Crabtree Publishing, 1998.
Love, Anne, with Jane Drake. Farming. Buffalo, NY: Kids Can Press, 1998.
Peterson, Cris. Century Farm: One Hundred Years on a Family Farm. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press, 1999.
Rendon, Marcie R., and Cheryl Walsh Bellville. Farmer’s Market. Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books, 2001.
Splear, Elsie Lee. Growing Seasons. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2000.
Swain, Gwenyth. Chig and the Second Spread. New York: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2003.
Toht, David W. Sodbuster. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications, 1996.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Any Title
Web Sties
4-H Virtual Farm
www.ext.vt.edu/resources/4h/virtualfarm/main.html
California Strawberry Commission
CyberSpace Farm
Farm Animals / Farm Life
http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/web/farmanim.html
Farm Bureau for Kids
www.farmbureaukids.com/kidscorner/kidscorner.html
The Kids’ Ag Page
www.agr.state.il.us/kidspage/index.html
Kidz’ Korner from the Michigan Dairy Association
MooMilk.com
National Agriculture Day
www.agday.org/tc/tc-farmlife.html
National Corn Growers Association
www.ncga.com/deucation/main/index.html
USDA for Kids
www.usda.gov/news/usdakids/index.html