Ag Day at Great Valley Elementary School was back on Wednesday.
After a two-year layoff due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the area’s largest agricultural-based event of its kind returned with multiple presenters, who shared different aspects of their livelihood to the community.
“For our third graders and younger, this was their first-ever Ag Day experience,” said Jeannie Pacheco.
She spearheaded the event for the past two decades, maintaining her contacts to make possible this 18th annual Ag Day held on the campus.
Included were donations from the likes of Simplot, Horace Mann / Steve Fisher, SSJID, California Nuggets, Coca-Cola and Home Depot as well as several local businesses.
“The Stockton Emergency Food Bank provided samplings of healthy (fruit and vegetable) snacks and Simplot really stepped up in helping fund Ag Day,” Pacheco said.
Eighth grader Jocelyn Castellanos, a first-year student at Great Valley, enjoyed her Ag Day experience. “I really like seeing the farm animals and that students can take home a plant,” she said.
Home Depot supplied the soil and one of the teachers donated the succulent plants used for the giveaway, according to Pacheco.
For students of the Future Farmers of America chapters – involved were high schoolers from Sierra High and Weston Ranch High – Ag Day allowed them to showcase their livestock projects. Senior Izik Meleza, for example, brought along his sheep ‘Vlad’ to interact with the Great Valley youngsters.
His livestock will be entered in for auction at next month’s Ag Fest at the San Joaquin County fairgrounds.
Pacheco said that one of the big reasons for putting on Ag Day is to expose students to the area in which they live. “This was once all farm land,” she added.
The one of the new experiences for students was their virtual field trip to a dairy by the Dairy Council of California.
Other from that, the Ag Day experiences were mostly hands on – students were able to pet a non-venomous python snake.
Organizers, in addition, acknowledged the efforts of Jasmine Cruz-Olguin and Aryiannah Caroro. The two fourth graders collaborated, edited and created the design for this year’s Ag Day T-shirts.
