NORTH HOLLYWOOD : Schoolchildren Get a Lesson Down on Farm

Back in the 1890s, farmers made up almost 90% of the population in the United States.

Today, according to the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau, only 2% of Americans are in the agriculture industry and the rest of the public are far removed from the life of the farmer.

To educate youngsters about agriculture, Strathern Street Elementary School in North Hollywood sponsored a Farm Day on Thursday at their school, inviting local farm groups and service organizations to bring their livestock to the campus.

Sheep rancher Howard March brought two lambs to show the schoolchildren how they are bottle-fed.

Darlene Keeble, who has a small menagerie of her own on her one-acre lot in Sun Valley, brought about a dozen recently hatched chicks and some chickens.

Teen-age members of the 4-H Club in Acton brought young goats, lambs and bunnies, which they guarded in little pens.

Another 4-H Club, this one from Mojave, brought a guide dog to the school.

Class by class, the students at Strathern stopped at the different animal pens and explanation stations set up in the playground to see the farm animals.

Earlier, the upper grades at Strathern attended an assembly where the children were shown a video about all the parts of a McDonald’s hamburger: where they start out and how they are processed, to show kids that even burgers originate at a farm.

“California grows over 250 kinds of crops,” said Don Fiske of the California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom.

“And we surpassed Wisconsin in dairy production,” said Cyndi Alesso, who works with her husband, Casey, the president of the Los Angeles County Farm Bureau, a farming education and lobbyist group.