Hard to Compete

It's kind of hard to compete with Johanna the Cow. She was one of the star attractions at the Ag Day for fourth graders at Ellsworth County last week.

I'm guessing the fourth graders didn't give much thought about how milk gets to their school lunch milk carton before they watched Johanna give up the goods.

How are two middle-aged Kansas wheat farmers to compete with this sleeping bundle of cute? There was a collective "Awww!" when a beef farmer revealed a day-old baby calf snuggled in a bed of hay. The baby was a twin. She may not have been accepted by the mama cow, but there were about 55 fourth graders who would have been glad to give her a good home.

But we did our best. Maybe getting to play in a bushel of wheat will help fourth graders think about the wheat that goes into their peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I hope a few of them took their little plastic bag of wheat home and planted it. If so, they should be getting a few green sprigs right about now.

It may not be a baby calf or a big-eyed cow. But maybe, just maybe, it sprouted an awareness that they didn't have before.

(And I'm already trying to figure out how to bring up the fascination quotient for a couple of wheat farmers.)