Irvine Agriculture Discovery Centre Celebrates Harvest with Fall Fair Event

This coming Thursday, September 19, the Agricultural Discovery Centre (ADC) at Irvine School is hosting a Fall Festival and Welcome Back BBQ. “It’s a great chance for us to welcome our families back and to showcase all the things we do at the ADC,” said ADC Coordinator Nichole Neubauer.  

The BBQ portion of the evening will also act as a meet the teacher event and is only for students of Irvine School along with their families. However, the activities, farmers market and auction is open to everyone, explained Shawn Yeast, who teaches Grade 4 along with the AgPro CTF course. Due to the abundance of rain this growing season, the garden has been amazing and there is an abundance of produce to sell.  

This semester, students in the AgPro CTF course have been learning about event planning and have been creating posters and advertising for the upcoming Fall Festival. They’ve been planning activities for those attending to participate in.  

Grade 8 student Hayes, who is helping to organize the festival, explained, “We’ll be selling two hogs, two lambs and 13 chickens. There will be pumpkin bowling, arts and crafts, and an egg and spoon race. We are selling farmer’s market stuff also as we had a good harvest. We are selling potatoes, onions, bags of carrots, beets, pumpkins and squash along with eggs from the laying hens. The Foods Class in the school made some muffins and other items that will also be for sale.” 

Yeast added there will also be a photo booth along with a selfie contest during the evening. “We are trying to get some of the family pictures included and have a contest with three categories: most unique, most authentic and funniest picture. The CTF students will vote on the photos to choose the winners.”  

The activities will run from 5 to just before 7 p.m., which is when the auction will begin. There will be a garden tractor train on hand to transport people between the school and the ADC. David Lutz is once again volunteering his time to be the auctioneer for the evening with all money raised used for programming and operation costs for the ADC.  

This year, the two steers, which were once again donated to the ADC by Short Grass Ranches, will be sold by live auction at the Medicine Hat Feeding Company the day prior to the Fall Festival, on Wednesday, September 18 at 9 a.m. Two students from Irvine School, Senya, who is Vice President of the ADC Board, and Lexi, Secretary of the board, will act as ambassadors of the ADC at the auction.  

“They speak before the auction to talk about the program and the importance of agriculture education and enhancing ag-literacy and agri-food literacy for students and the work the ADC is putting towards that. The current price of cattle is very high, and we want to ensure the steers sell for market value and this will guarantee that,” stated Neubauer.  

Lexi and Senya feel honoured to be chosen to represent the ADC at the auction. “It felt good that we were highly spoken of,” said Lexi.  

“We are going to thank everyone and explain where our steers came from and talk about how they were raised. I don’t know how much they weigh, but my bet is on about 1,300 lbs I’m guessing,” added Senya.  

 By Samantha Johnson, Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer