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Breakfast on the Farm
NARRATOR: More than 2,500 visitors showed up at the
Clinton County Michigan Breakfast on the Farm. Folks were treated to pancakes, sausage and
other breakfast items. Organizers hope the free family-oriented event, hosted by Albert
and Els Steenblik , will allow people to meet farm families and see how their food is grown.
BITE: Faith Cullens Our goal is to educate the general public
about modern-day agriculture and how their food is produced. We’re doing that through
a dairy farm because it’s interesting, we’ve got calves, we’ve got milk so we’ve got
an end product, we have cows. So it’s a really good venue so that people can interact
with the animals and the farmers. NARRATOR:
In addition to the free food there was also a tour of the dairy production facility. Sounds
simple enough, but there were a few surprises. BITE: Cherry Byrd
“Anything surprise you? No, except the cleanliness. I was surprised that it is as clean as it
is here. Because you never know., you just drive by and you buy milk at the store, so
you never know.”
BITE: Chris VanderHeidt “At how clean the stalls were, and the cows
were. You know, you always think of muddy cows and stinky—it really wasn’t a bad
experience at all.” NARRATOR:
Roughly 200 volunteers made it possible for Albert Steenblik to host visitors on his farm
and provide a great experience. BITE: Albert Sttenblik
“At first I thought you know why do we have to almost sometimes defend ourselves to what
we’re doing. I mean, you take somebody that works at a car factory or works at a restaurant
, I mean, I don’t think they have to defend themselves to what they’re doing. If you
think about it a little bit more, you know, especially the bigger farm when the people
look at it and say whoo what’s going on here. This is like a big factory and then
you think maybe it’s probably better that we show them what we’re doing and how we’re
doing it.” And people were definitely enjoying breakfast
on the farm.
BITE: Jennifer Jones “It was really neat to see the cows and
to go through the different barns and to see them when they’re really little and to go
all the way up and when we went into the milking parlor we got to see the ultra sound and see
the baby calf in the ultrasound and that was really neat.”
BITE: Jordyn Jones “the baby cows. And what did you like best
about the baby cows? They were really cute. Did you like to feed them? Yea. With the milk
in the bottle? Yea.” NARRATOR:
There was a message to take home. BITE: Faith Cullens
that farmers are doing a good job. That they are producing a safe, quality product, not
just dairy farmers but all of agriculture. NARRATOR:
From Michigan State University. I’m Kraig Ehm reporting.