“It’s not every day you can pet a cow.”
Cow-petting is not typically part of professional development opportunities for teachers. Appropriately enough, however, cows were a highlight during an inaugural Engaging Communities in Agriculture Education (ECAE) workshop in October, as one participating teacher noted in her evaluation.
“Facilitators were, at times, competing to be heard over the very enthusiastic on-site cows who loudly communicated with the rancher about mealtime,” says PEI’s Eastern Washington FieldSTEM Coordinator Amy Dawley. “In addition, there was an opportunity for participants to ‘pet’ the cows. Jake Wolfe, a local rancher and Vetter Farm Superintendent for Stevens County Conservation District (SCCD), clearly had a real relationship with this small group of cows and suggested they might welcome and benefit from some extra love, as they were recently separated from calves.”
The workshop was a collaboration between PEI, SCCD, Pend Oreille Conservation District (POCD), and Washington State University Stevens County Extension. It was funded through a three-year Natural Resources Conservation Service (NCRS) Equity and Outreach in Conservation grant awarded to POCD. It was the first of three workshops (one per year) for educators to learn about resources and strategies for integrating sustainable agriculture into their curriculum with a focus on maintaining, repairing, and restoring soil health to meet agricultural goals and objectives.
Twenty educators from eight eastern Washington school districts attended the workshop, which began with an exercise to map carbon flow, then moved into three hands-on activities around analyzing soil health. “Engagement was high and curiosity was reflected through a lot of questions and discussion,” says Dawley.
Participants’ excitement grew around the magic of chemistry (using bromothymol blue as a visual indicator to analyze microbial activity); comparing soil structure and water retention between tilled and no-tilled fields; the afore-mentioned cow-petting; “virtual fence” technology as a tool to more efficiently manage pasturing cows to keep them from danger as well as protect ecological systems like streams/rivers; and following microbial and invertebrate research out of WSU.
They also enjoyed interacting with Wolfe. “Educators appreciated that Vetter Farm attempts to replicate and explore practices that are truly reflective of those being employed in the region,” Dawley notes. “They are not pushing an agenda around agricultural practices that are not already being considered or implemented. They are employing science to model and demonstrate options backed by results for financial success while maintaining or improving ecological health.”
“Without having an ag background, I learned so much from this training,” one participant reported in a post-workshop evaluation. “I loved the relevancy to our community,” another shared. A third commented, “It was interesting to see the variety of presenters. I don’t think people realize all the types of jobs related to agriculture.” The group voiced interest in being able to follow findings after hearing from a WSU graduate student about her soil microbial activity research at Vetter Farm.
PEI will be co-facilitating with the planning partners to provide two more workshops by spring, 2027. The group may offer similarly formatted workshops for additional regional educators or go deeper into soil science with the fall 2024 workshop cohort. POCD will also be offering supported field experiences related to agriculture for interested educators and student groups during the 2026-27 school year.