Warrenton, GA |
Tucked just outside the front of a school in Warren County sits a garden that’s become a centerpiece for agricultural education in this small, rural community. Known as the 4-H Farm and School Garden, the project started with a simple idea: bring kids outside and connect them to the land that feeds them.
“Warren County is absolutely rural, but even though it’s rural, that doesn’t mean our kids know where their food comes from. It doesn’t mean they know how to produce it, and we want to teach them — just like we teach farmers every day in the office — sustainability,” said Tammy Cheely. “We hope they never have to feed themselves, but we want them to know how if they have to. And we want them to understand and appreciate Warren County’s tax base and our lifestyle, because it is a farming community. So we wanted to build a bridge between farmers and the school.”
That bridge has certainly taken shape over the last couple of years, as the garden has been upgraded, expanded, and poured into by the community — success that organizers say can be attributed to getting kids involved as early as possible.
“Typically, 4-H starts in fourth grade, but we decided to go back and pick up those early learners. We found the younger we get them started, the more they love it and the longer they stay with it,” said Amanda Wilkerson. “They’ve eaten things that I would have never touched when I was their age, and my boys did not eat when they were their age. But we found that when they get out in the garden and are working it, they’re a lot more likely to try.”
To their surprise, that willingness to try new things doesn’t stop at the garden gate. Wilkerson says parents across the county have noticed a real change at home — and that ripple effect is exactly what the program is built for.
“We want to make this a family affair, not just for our students. We’re hoping that by impacting our 4-H’ers, we can impact their families as well — and I know that we have,” Wilkerson said. “I can go to a store here in town and hear someone say, ‘Hey, Miss Amanda,’ and I’ll wave. It’ll be one of my 4-H’ers, and then I’ll go meet their parents and they’ll say, ‘You’re the reason they want me to buy a head of lettuce to make lettuce wraps,’ or ‘You’re the reason my child wants chickens,’ because we have a big poultry team and we expose them to poultry as early as we can.”
With agriculture being Warren County’s number one industry, Wilkerson says the garden serves a bigger purpose beyond growing vegetables — it’s about exposing students to the many different facets of the field.
“It’s more than just growing things or raising animals. There are so many facets of agriculture. Because our county is so big in agriculture, we want to expose our students to as many components of ag as we can — to raise their awareness, but also to help them find their passion,” Wilkerson said. “Some of these students have no clue. We walked in and I pointed at the very first crop and asked, ‘What’s that?’ If you’ve ever seen it before, you know that’s corn. They don’t always know that. The simple reason is they haven’t been exposed, and we want to give them as much exposure to agriculture as we can.”
For a county built on farming, the 4-H Farm and School Garden is doing exactly what it was designed to do — planting the seeds of curiosity in a new generation, one lettuce wrap and one curious question at a time.