Partners in Massachusetts Agriculture Education
Mass. Department of Agricultural Resources
Autumn 2007 Newsletter
There is a new way to express your support for agriculture in our state both visually and financially. You can also support your favorite state or local agricultural organization, including Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom, while you do it. Orders are now being taken for the new Massachusetts Agriculture Specialty License Plate. The plate design was created and donated by graphic designer Susan Bergeron West.
Proceeds from the sale of these specialty plates will go to a newly created Massachusetts Agricultural Trust Fund. The Trust will fund programs and services that help farmers remain on the cutting edge in today’s market such as innovative practices, research, improvements in managing resources, marketing, training and education. By purchasing this plate, you’ll help preserve 520,000 acres of open space, the beauty of Massachusetts, our farming heritage and local farming families. You’ll also protect 13,545 jobs and the value local agriculture has on our economy while reaping fresher and better tasting food. And you’ll help shrink our carbon footprint by reducing the distance our food travels to market.
We need to sell at least 3,000 license plates in the next two years. Once 1,500 have been ordered, those plates will be produced and sent to regional RMV offices for distribution. The total cost to transfer your automobile registration to an “Ag Tag” is $60. This includes the $40 donation to the Agricultural Trust, and a $20 fee to swap plates paid directly to the RMV when the new plate arrives. Renewals every second year will cost $81, which includes the $41 RMV registration fee, and $40 specialty plate contribution to the Trust.
To apply for your Mass. Agricultural Specialty License now; send a $40 check made payable to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. From this, $12 will go to the RMV for production costs and the Agricultural Trust Fund will receive $28. The Trust will then distribute $15 to the organization responsible for the sale. We hope that you will mark your support for Mass. Agriculture in the Classroom, when you send in your order. To find out more about the Mass. Ag Tag, download an order form, choose a plate number or track the orders, visit www.mass.gov/agr/agtag.
Marjorie A. Cooper
We are also grateful to the many farmers who opened their homes and places of business, sharing their knowledge and passion about agriculture with so many teachers. A grant from the National Agriculture in the Classroom program provided stipends for educational speakers and materials for these workshops and will also provide resources for other upcoming programs. We thank them for their support.
Each workshop offered the unique opportunity to learn about a different area of agriculture, while also trying some activities for the classroom. Some highlights were: exploring cranberries and water cycles with the McCaffrey family; making cheese at Smith Country Cheese; harvesting and making lunch at Manda Farm; touring the gardens at Tranquil Lake Nursery; herb lore and crafts at Hartman’s Herb Farm; learning about local foods and picking beets and carrots from the field with Steve Verrill and so much more.
It was my pleasure to attend both the opening workshop and the final wrap up meeting for the Graduate Course. I especially enjoyed listening to teacher final reports and hearing about how they plan to take their summer of agriculture into their classrooms. I assure you that agricultural literacy is alive and well in Massachusetts.
As teachers presented their reports to their peers, other participants added suggestions to help expand the lessons across the frameworks. They shared past successes and offered tips to help avoid potential failures. These teachers have become an agricultural support group for one another. I expect many farmers to have good relationships with teachers in their own local community. Everyone will benefit.
2007 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year
Bill Cassell
Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom is proud to announce our Teacher of the Year for 2007. Bill Cassell is a third-grade teacher at the L.D. Batchelder School in North Reading. Over the past several years, Bill has attended MAC workshops contributing his insights, received a mini-grant to support his Field to Plate Program and taught a workshop for educators at our 2007 Conference. We have been inspired by his enthusiasm for teaching and his program where students grow wheat, corn, beans, potatoes and apples and then make food from their crops based on the foods that immigrants would have brought with them. After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Bill worked as a manager in the newspaper publishing industry for almost 20 years. During much of this time, his focus was on developing and leading managers in acts of radical and continuous change.
To be with his newborn son, Bill began consulting in 1992, which gave him time to volunteer in an elementary school near his home in Lexington. In the classroom of Steven Levy, Mass. Teacher of the Year in 1992, he realized that teaching elementary students was immensely satisfying and probably a more efficient way of implementing change in society than managing adults. Bill subsequently earned a Master’s Degree in Education from Lesley College and began teaching 3rd grade at the Batchelder School in 2000. His classroom is an inspiration and we congratulate him!
MAC is seeking nominations now for the 2008 MAC Teacher of the Year Award. Do you know a teacher who does an exceptional job of bringing agriculture alive in their classroom? Consider nominating them for this special award. Send a description of their agricultural classroom, and the reason that you recommend them for the award, to the address below. Applications are due March 15, 2008. The winner will be high-lighted in the Fall 2008 MAC newsletter and the award will be presented at our MAC Annual Conference in February of 2009.
Special Grants for Teachers and Schools Connecting with Local Agricultural Commissions
MAC will award eight special grants in the amount of $150 each to projects that strengthen connections between the classroom and your local Agricultural Commission. These Special Mini-grant proposals are due November 1 and will be awarded based on: 1) the agricultural education merit of the project; 2) the number of students reached; 3) matching funds or time given by local Agricultural Commission members; and 4) the lasting value of the project or purchased materials. For more information visit our website at www.aginclassroom.org or send to P.O. Box 345 Seekonk, MA 02771.
2008 Calendar of Massachusetts Agriculture Now Available
The winning photos from this year’s Massachusetts Agriculture Photo Contest, portraying local farms and farm products throughout the seasons have been published in the 2008 Massachusetts Agriculture Calendar. View these winning photos at www.mass.gov/agr/events.
Published by MAC in cooperation with the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, the calendar also includes agricultural and conservation facts, teacher tips, events, websites, and a seasonal crop chart. Pages were sponsored by the Massachusetts Fairs Association, Massachusetts Flower Growers Association, Massachusetts Fruit Growers Association, Massachusetts Maple Producers Association, and The Trustees of Reservations.
Calendars may be purchased for $10 each; proceeds benefit MAC. Send a check payable to MAC with your name and address to: Calendar, MAC, P.O. Box 345, Seekonk, MA 02771.
The scientific name for honeybees is Apis mellifera, meaning honey bearer. Honeybees originated in the Middle East millions of years ago and migrated from there across North Africa, Europe and Asia. They were brought by early immigrants to America and Australia.
Honeybees are social insects, living in colonies as large as 50,000 members. Each colony occupies its own hive in a dark place like a hollow tree or cave.
Humans have gathered honey from the wild since before recorded history. By 3,000 B.C. ancient Egyptians were using mud or clay hives to raise honeybees and others kept them in carved-out logs. The beeskep basket arose in Europe in the Middle Ages. While each of these practices provided honey for the beekeeper, they had the disadvantage of destroying the hive.
In 1851-52, a Philadelphia teacher named Lorenzo Langstroth invented the moveable-frame beehive. It allow-wed the beekeeper to preserve the bees and take only excess honey they would not need to survive the winter. Modern beehives use similar wooden box hives.
The honeybee is the only insect that humans raise for food. It is especially important economically for its role in pollination, the transfer of pollen grains from the stamens to the pistil. Without pollination and subsequent fertilization, fruit and seed production would not occur. As the bee crawls around on a blossom looking for nectar, her hairy body is dusted with pollen, which is then transferred to the next flower.
There are hundreds of indigenous species of bees and wasps that are native to North America. These bees and wasps pollinate flowers and can be found in orchards and gardens along with the honeybees. However, all of the indigenous species of bees and wasps, such as the bumble bee, are solitary or live in colonies of 300 or smaller. They also do not live year-round in colonies.
Honeybees live through the winter in colonies of about 7,000. The queen begins laying eggs and increasing the colony as soon as the first flowers bloom in the spring. When the orchards and vegetable fields come into bloom, the sheer quantity of honeybees provides the pollination necessary to guarantee good fruit and seed production.
The honeybee is also a generalist, and feeds on any flower that is in bloom. However, unlike many of the native pollinators, she gathers pollen from just one type of plant at a time, and will visit many flowers of that type before she returns to the hive. This is very important to plants that require cross-pollination, such as apples that are self-sterile or plants like squash and pumpkin that have separate male and female flowers.
Another advantage of the honeybee as a pollinator is that a large number of honeybees can be brought to the plants that require pollinating. When apples, pears, blueberries, cranberries, pumpkins and many other crops come into bloom, local beekeepers bring their hives to the farm or orchard. When larger numbers are needed, farmers hire national companies that go from state-to-state as the seasons progress. This movement of hives is very hard on honeybees, especially the queen. Beekeepers closely manage the hives.
Sixteen hundred migratory beekeepers truck their hives all over the United States each year to pollinate more than 130 crops, producing $270,000 million worth of honey, beeswax and other hive products and adding $15 billion in crop value annually. The United States ranks third in honey production worldwide, behind Russia and China. Massachusetts ranks second in New England for honey production at 167,566 pounds of honey.
In recent years honeybees have faced a number of stresses that have reduced their numbers in managed colonies and nearly eradicated them in the wild.
Habitat loss from the encroachment on open spaces by development and fragmentation of forests causes reduction of honey plants and nesting sites. Careless pesticide usage by home-owners and others, and its residue in water sources, kills bees as well as other pollinators. Honeybees do not visit flowers on cold and wet days. However, many native bees and wasps do. Adjacent woods and fields that offer nest sites for these native pollinators are important to farms, especially for plants that have flowers that stay open for just one day.
Starting in the 1980s, two different parasitic mites that infect honeybees, but not native pollinators, began to spread their way through the U.S., moving with the migratory beekeepers. They reached the northeast by 1995, where 90 percent of the honeybee colonies died. The Tracheal Mite is microscopic and lives in the trachea and the Varroa mite, which is about the size of a pin head, lives externally. Both puncture the honeybee to suck blood, causing stress on the immune system. A number of viruses are also linked with these mites, entering the body through the holes they make.When these mites multiply in sufficient numbers they seriously affect the health of the colony, vectoring honeybee viruses between larva, pupa and adult stages throughout the hive. Within two-three years the hive will collapse.
Beekeepers medicate their hives in late summer to protect from these mites. The medication helps to maintain the hives but does not cure the problem. Much research is being done to identify pathogens and to develop treatments or resistance in honeybee colonies. Beekeepers themselves are actively involved in the observation and diagnosis process as they manage their honeybees throughout the year.
Modern bee hives are built with removable sections. The beekeeper manages the hive to provide a surplus of honey beyond what the honeybee colony needs, while also protecting the hive from weather and predators. The hive may be wrapped in paper to keep it from freezing in winter or placed in the shade near water in the summer. Beekeepers may also move the hive to place honeybees near nectar sources.
The Cover is galvanized and extends out over the boxes below to protect them from the elements. Below it an Inner Cover may be used to provide insulating air space and also prevent bees from attaching comb to the cover.
The beehive is stacked in sections. Each section is a wooden box with eight to ten hanging wooden frames in which the honeybees build their honeycombs and raise the brood. To help them build their honeycombs faster, the beekeeper places wax foundations in these frames.
Supers are the boxes where the bees store excess honey once they have sup-plied enough for the growing brood. Beekeepers harvests only honey from supers that the honeybees will not need to survive. Honey Supers are placed above the primary super or Food Chamber, which contains the honey that the honeybees will eat all winter, about 50 pounds.A Queen Excluder keeps the queen bee from passing from the brood chamber into the supers to lay eggs.
The Brood Chamber or hive body is where the bees live, the queen lays eggs and the brood is raised. Honey and pollen is also stored for food.
The Bottom Board forms the floor of the hive. A wooden entrance reducer keeps mice and some cold out during winter. The hive rests on a wooden Hive Stand which keeps the bottom dry and insulates from some cold. The stand may be set on brick.
When honeybees have capped most of the honeycomb cells in the honey super, the beekeeper removes the comb from the hive. An electric heat knife is used to melt the wax caps and open each honeycomb. The honeycomb is then placed in an extractor that spins the honey and separates it from the comb. Finally the honey is strained through a metal screen and a cloth to filter out wax particles and packed in tight jars. The rest of the empty honeycomb frames are returned to the hive for the honeybees to fill again.
Beekeeping Equipment includes gloves, white coveralls with elastic straps at the ankles and wrist, boots, a helmet and mesh veil. A tool called a smoker calms the bees, since when honeybees smell smoke they gorge themselves on honey and are less likely to sting. Tools are also used to grip and pry apart the sticky frames.
Worker honeybees have six legs and three main body parts: head, thorax and abdomen. Two transparent fore wings and two smaller hind wings work in pairs to beat up to 250 times a minute, causing a humming sound.
Worker honeybees have six legs and three main body parts: head, thorax and abdomen. Two transparent fore wings and two smaller hind wings work in pairs to beat up to 250 times a minute, causing a humming sound.
Worker honeybees have six legs and three main body parts: head, thorax and abdomen. Two transparent fore wings and two smaller hind wings work in pairs to beat up to 250 times a minute, causing a humming sound.
Hind legs are fringed with stiff hairs to form pollen baskets. Front legs have three brushes. Two antennae are used for touching and smelling and a long hollow tongue called a proboscis is used to sip nectar. The honeybee has two stomachs, a midgut for digesting food and the crop for storing nectar. Glands in the abdomen produce wax and glands in the head secrete beemilk and royal jelly.
Two large compound eyes (a mosaic of many lenses) see in all directions and also detect ultraviolet light. Three smaller eyes are light-sensitive. The honeybee sees the sun, even behind clouds.
Honeybees are social insects. They live in huge groups in dark places. The population of the colony ranges from about 7,000 in mid-winter to over 50,000 in late summer and consists of one Queen, a hundred or more male drones and thousands of female workers.
The Queen is the largest honeybee, reaching almost an inch. She is continuously surrounded, protected, groomed and fed by a court of approximately 12 young worker bees. Her function is to lay eggs, as many as 1,500 a day. She does this day-after-day throughout the spring and summer. The life of the colony revolves around her and these eggs. She has a longer abdomen, a shiny thorax, and a stinger which she can use multiple times, but no pollen baskets.
Although she lives for three-to-five years, she begins life as an ordinary female worker larva. If worker honeybee larva is fed royal jelly from the time it is 48 hours old, it develops into a queen. Following a swarm, several new queens will hatch. The strongest kills the others and then flies high into the sky to mate with male drone honeybees, before returning to the colony to take over her duties as queen.
The Drone is the male honeybee. He is smaller than the queen, about 5/8 inch with a rounded abdomen, huge com-pound eyes and powerful wings. He has no stinger or wax secreting glands or proboscis, so he must be fed by worker bees. His purpose is to mate with the queen. He will live for about eight weeks.
Most bees inside the hive are Worker Bees. They are small, about ½ inch long. Honeybees go through four stages of development: egg, larva, pupa and adult. They change dramatically in each stage. Although all bees develop in four stages, the time it takes each type of bee to grow is different. Worker bees take 21 days for metamorphosis, drones require 24.
The worker bee starts as a fertilized egg, which hatches after three days into a wormlike larva. For three days, the larva is fed “beemilk” a protein-rich, yellow, creamy jelly that is secreted by the head of the worker bee. The larva is then fed “beebread,” a mixture of pollen and honey, for an additional three days until fully grown. The worker bee uses wax to seal the larva into a cell, where it spins a cocoon and rest as a pupa for twelve days. During this time the larva changes into an adult. When fully formed, the adult bee emerges.
The worker bee starts as a fertilized egg, which hatches after three days into a wormlike larva. For three days, the larva is fed “beemilk” a protein-rich, yellow, creamy jelly that is secreted by the head of the worker bee. The larva is then fed “beebread,” a mixture of pollen and honey, for an additional three days until fully grown. The worker bee uses wax to seal the larva into a cell, where it spins a cocoon and rest as a pupa for twelve days. During this time the larva changes into an adult. When fully formed, the adult bee emerges.
A female worker bees touches the young worker honeybee all over with her antennae and feeds her nectar regurgitated from her own stomach. The new worker bee will live just six weeks. During that time she progresses through a series of duties.
The first three weeks are spent working in the hive. Days 1 and 2 she cleans herself, her cell and other cells, so that the queen can lay more eggs. Days 3-5 she feeds beemilk to younger drones and worker larva. Days 6-11 she feeds beebread to older drones and worker larva and royal jelly (similar to beemilk but more nutritious – also made from secretions in the worker bee head) to the queen. By days 12-17 her wax secreting glands are most active. She makes flakes of wax in glands in her abdomen and chews them, molding the wax to store nectar and pollen. The hive is made of thousands of six sided-cells, each made of wax.
Days 18-21, some worker bees guard the hive entrance, permitting only those honeybees with the hive scent to enter. When in danger, a scent is emitted to warn others. Worker bees may also use their stinger, giving up their lives for the hive. The barbed stinger is attached to the abdomen, and part of the abdomen tears away when it is used. Other worker bees fan the hive using their wings to move air and water and keep the temperature in the brood a constant 93 degrees F. In cold weather, they beat their wings, moving the hive’s body heat to keep the brood at 50-60 degrees F.
Once the worker bee has reached three weeks of age, she is ready to fly outside the hive to forage. She makes about ten flights a day, each lasting nearly an hour to sources within three miles of the hive. She’ll leave before the dew dries in the morning and return from her last trip at sunset. She can visit ten flowers a minute, and stop at over six hundred flowers before returning to the hive.
The honeybee uses her eyes to see ultraviolet marking on flowers that are rich in nectar. She gathers nectar by sitting still and sucking it into her crop or honey stomach, using her long, needle-like proboscis. While in the crop, the nectar begins to break down to a simpler form of sugar that provides quick energy.As she moves around on the flower, tiny pollen grains stick to her hairy body. She hovers above the flower, brushing the pollen from her body, rolling it into a ball which she stores in pollen baskets – hairs on her hind legs. This pollen provides protein for the hive.
She also collects water from puddles, which is used to thin honey and air condition the hive. She may gather sap from plant buds with her jaws, storing it in her pollen baskets. This sap is used as bee glue to seal cracks for winter and varnish the inside walls of the hive.
Back at the hive, the honeybee uses her middle legs to scrape off the pollen grains, which are stored in the brood cells. She also regurgitates the nectar from her crop, feeding it to other bees. It is passed by tongue among the hive bees until some of its moisture is gone. Excess nectar is stored in the hive’s honey cells, where chemical changes take place to form honey. Honeybees collect nectar from over a million flowers to make one pound of honey. The average worker honeybee makes only 1/12 teaspoon in her lifetime.
When a worker bee finds a flower blossoms, she flies back to the hive and does a dance. The dance tells other worker bees where the flowers are located. After a worker bee has made about 400 long flights, the muscles in her wings and legs are worn out. She falls to the ground, dying of exhaustion.
In the fall, the colony reduces to about 7,000 workers. Drones are kicked out of the hive where they die of cold and starvation. In winter the honeybees movement slows down, although they do not hibernate. The worker bees cluster around the queen and brood to keep them warm. Those on the outside slowly move to the center, while those on the inside move out. By early spring only a little of the stored honey remains. Worker bees fly off in search of pollen and nectar, the queen lays.
Honey is a natural sweetener. Americans consume, on average, just over a pound of honey each year. Each drop of nectar makes honey with a different color, flavor and composition depending upon the flower source, season, soil and weather. Color ranges from clear to very dark.
Clover honey is light; orange blossom is fragrant and buckwheat honey is dark and robust. Other honey may be derived from alfalfa; tupelo; sage; sourwood; basswood; avocado; sunflower; goldenrod, or is wildflower honey from bees who feed on a variety of sources including tree flowers.
Nectar is a weak solution of sugar and water. As the honeybee carries it to the hive and it is passed around, these sugars change to 40% levelose (fructose), 34% dextrose (glucose) and 2% sucrose. These sugars are readily available for energy. In the hive the nectar is also converted from approximately 65 to 17 percent moisture. The high sugar content prevents bacteria from growing and assures that the honey does not spoil. It also makes honey a good dressing for wounds.
Honey also contains small amounts of minerals and nutrients such as iron, lime, sodium, calcium, copper, albumen, dextrine, nitrogen, protein, acid and amino acid. Vitamin C can be found in unfiltered honey that still contains pollen.
Honey may be purchased as a liquid, in its original comb, in chunks, or crystallized into a cream. It is also used to sweeten many processed foods including graham crackers, ice cream and barbecue sauce. Honey should not be fed to infants under one year of age.Because of its high fructose content, honey is sweeter than sugar, with 21 calories a teaspoon as compared to 15 for sugar. It absorbs and retains moisture, so homemade goods stay fresh longer. Store honey in a dry place; do not refrigerate. Honey that crystallizes is not spoiled. Remove the lid and place the jar in warm water until the crystals dissolve.
Beekeepers harvest useful products from the hive in addition to honey. Here are just a few of these products.
Beeswax has a high melting point of 146 degrees F. It is used to make candles, lipstick, artist’s crayons, shoe polish, floor polish, sealing wax, grafting wax and buffing wax.
Royal Jelly is sometimes used in cosmetics and as a food supplement because it is believed to be nutritious.
Pollen contains 10 to 35 percent protein and some vitamins and minerals. It is sold as a protein supplement in health food stores.
Propolis or bee glue is used as a supplement and in health foods. It is also mixed with mineral spirits to make a natural varnish. Some beekeepers also manage their hives to produce additional queens that they ship to other beekeepers.
1. Ask the class to generate a list of “things we know about honeybees” and a list of “questions we have about honeybees.” Identify the questions that can be answered by experimentation and those through books or interviews.
2. Collect poetry and music about honeybees. Ask students to make up their own haiku.3. Ask students for words or phrases in current usage that were derived from honeybees: “busy as a bee,” “make a beeline.” What do these words mean?
4. Ask students to research honeybees and the issues that have caused their decline. What can they do to protect honeybees and native pollinators?
5. Ask students to sample honey from several different nectar sources. What type do they prefer?
6. Discuss how honeybees communicate and teach students the honeybee waggle dance found on the MAC website.
Honeybees and flowers evolved in the age of dinosaurs. The first fossil deposits date back to the Oligicene Period.The interest in honeybees and beekeeping continued into modern times.
- By 8,000 B.C. - Humans were hunting honeybees with torches.
- 6,000 B.C - The ancient Greeks made coins using a honeybee design.
- 3,000 B.C. - Ancient Egyptians kept honeybees in mud and clay hives.
- 1,800 B.C. - Jewelry from Crete depicts two golden bees holding a drop of honey
- 1,300 B.C. - Honeybees can be found on early rock paintings.
- 384-322 B.C. - Ancient Greeks led by Aristotle, studied how to keep honeybees
- 50 B.C. - Romans painted pictures with melted dyed beeswax.
- 1500 A.D. - Beekeppers used straw skeps in stone shelters called bee boles.
- 1565 A.D. - Spanish settlers introduce honey-bees near St. Augustine for altar candles.
- 1622 A.D. - English settlers introduce honey-bees to the Jamestown Colony.
- 1800s A.D. - Native Americans refer to honey-bees as “White Man’s Flies.”
- 1800 A.D. - Honeybees were a prominent political symbol in Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte.
- 1850s A. D. - Honeybees were carried by ship to California.
- 1851 A.D. - Lorenzo Langstroth discovers concept of “bee space.”
- 1859 to 1922 A.D. - European subspecies honeybee imported to America.
- 1956 A.D. - Africanized subspecies of honey-bee was introduced in Brazil.
- 1973 A.D. - Karl von Frisch awarded Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for discovery of honeybee language and dance communication.
- 1990 A.D. - First Africanized honeybees were detected in Texas.
- 2000 A.D. - Cornell Study reveals increased yields and quantity of honeybee pollination is valued at greater than 14.6 billion per year.
- 2006 A.D. - Colony Collapse Disorder world-wide.
Mass. Department of Agricultural Resources
Al Carl
251 Causeway St., Suite 500
Boston, MA 02114-2151
(617) 626-1802
e-mail: Al.Carl@state.ma.us
www.mass.gov/agr
Massachusetts Beekeepers’ Association Paul Desilets, Secretary
186 Old Country Rd P. O. Box 808
East Sandwich, MA 02637(508) 888-2304
e-mail: beekeepr@gis.net
www.massbee.orgfor a list of Honey Bee Schools
www.abfnet.orgBeekeeper Directory
UMontana On-Line Beehive & Kids Activities
http://beekeeper.dbs.umt.edu/bees/Books
The information from this newsletter was taken from the resources listed above. The bibliography was provided by beekeeper and teacher Ken Oles.
- Johnny Appleseed Resources for teaching multiple disciplines, visitwww.21stcenturyschools.com/Fall_Unit_Themes.htm.
- Growing A Nation, the award-winning social studies program in flash format, can be launched from the web. Explore this ag multi-media at www.agclassroom.org/gan.
- Economic Research Fact Sheets providing information on farms, population, commodities and exports for each state can be found at www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/.
- Local Pick-Your-Own Orchards and Orchard tours can be found at www.massfruitgrowers.org.
- Ag in the Classroom Lessons for Grades 7-8 available from Oklahoma http://agweb.okstate.edu/fourh/aitc/lessons/upper/index.html.
- National Fruits & Veggies - More Matters Month! For teaching ideas, recipes & activities and more visit www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org
- Gardens for Learning comprehensive guidebook and curriculum can be downloaded at www.csgn.org.
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Massachusetts Agriculture in the Classroom
P.O. Box 345
Seekonk, MA 02771
(508) 336-4426 Fax: (508) 336-0682