Murray State students get a chance to teach children about agriculture during the annual ‘Fall on the Farm’

Story by Alicia Steele, Staff writer

Luke King, senior from Burkesville, Kentucky, stood in his overalls and cowboy boots and asked for volunteers from his elementary school audience. As eager hands shot up, King called on one student and asked to borrow her shoe.

King held her tiny shoe in the air and with two more student volunteers demonstrated how farmers used to have to fix shoes by hand. 

King said he wanted to teach students to be “more grateful for what they do have and who provided it to them” by showing them how technology has changed through time.

This is Fall on the Farm.

Murray State’s Hutson School of Agriculture and the Agricultural Leadership Council began hosting its annual Fall on the Farm Wednesday.

Fall on the Farm runs Wednesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for elementary school students in western Kentucky, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the public.

Fall on the Farm includes the farm tool demonstrations, a corn maze, a corn pit, a duck race, a giant slide and a wooden cow that kids can learn to milk.

The idea for Fall on the Farm came from the wife of Tony Brannon, dean of the Hutson School of Agriculture, after she took a two hour ride to Saxton, Missouri on a field trip with her son, where they charged $20 per student.

She brought the idea back to her husband and said Murray State could pull this off for much less of a cost to students, and the Agricultural Leadership Council took it over as a student project. Each event is run by student volunteers.

“The entire Hutson School of Agriculture is invited; every club, whoever wants to volunteer can” Kaitlin Ziesmer, senior from Danville, Kentucky and Agricultural Leadership Council President, said. 

Katelyn Jaqueway, senior from Schoharie, New York, has volunteered for the event the past four years. She said she continues to stay involved because of the joy it brings to kids and it teaches them more about agriculture. 

“Little kids think chocolate milk comes from brown cows,” she said.

To illustrate where milk actually comes from, Fall on the Farm has a wooden cow that students can learn to milk.

Fall on the Farm is hosted at Stanley Pullen Farm, which was left to Murray State after Mabel Pullen died in 1995. Mabel outlive her husband by 60 years. 

Her husband, Stanley Pullen was the first full-time teacher and chairman of the Agriculture Department at Murray State Normal School (now Murray State University), according to the Hutson School of Agriculture website.

After Stanley Pullen’s death in 1935, Mabel depended heavily on the agriculture department to maintain the farm, and left it and one million dollars in scholarships to Murray State when she died.

“If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Pullen, none of this would have been possible” Brannon said.