Cherokee County Farm Field Days organizers took a few moments recently to honor those who have helped preserve the local farm heritage during the Sixth Annual Appreciation Banquet at Centre First United Methodist Church.

The theme for Farm Field Days 2007 was "Dairy." Field Days is held in September at the Sand Rock Livestock Arena.

“The reason you are here is because you had a part in our Farm Field Days and without you we could not do it,” said Dewandee Neyman, founder of Farm Field Days in Cherokee County. “Without your support we could not do that. Over the last six years, we have put over $12,000 in our K-3 classrooms in educational materials. We are very proud of that. We want to thank you for being here again and we want to thank our teachers for helping us to educate our children about agriculture.”

This past year, Neyman said, they added another component to Farm Field Days, an Ag Literacy Day that was held in March.

“We gave every K-3 teacher a book and we had our FCCLA students, FFA students and ag teachers reading to students,” said Neyman. “We then gave books to the classrooms. We were very proud of doing that and hopefully, we are going to do that this year.”

The Farm Field Committee also purchased a cotton gin this past year to be used at Farm Field Days events.

Yvonne Jacoway, family and consumer science teacher at Sand Rock School, recognized the 2007 Farm Field Days Essay and Poster winners. As part of the program, committee members served the meal to poster and essay winners.

Poster winners in the K-3 Division were Austin Griffith, a student at Sand Rock School, first place winner; Julia Chesnut, a student at Centre Elementary School, second place winner and Daniel Jones, third place winner, also a student at Centre Elementary School.

Poster winners in the K-4 Division were Claire Chesnut, a student at Centre Elementary School, first place winner, and Nilan Grimes, also a student at Centre Elementary School, second place winner.

Essay winner was Hannah Leach, a student at Cedar Bluff School.

“We’d like to thank everybody for being involved in the Farm City Program,” said Barry Bailey, ag teacher at Sand Rock School. “We were talking earlier. I said, ‘Dewandee, who is the Farm City Committee?’ She said, ‘Everybody that is here.’ All of you have had some part in this program and it would be hard to start calling names of different folks, but we would like to thank everyone that has had a part.”

Farm Field Days, Bailey said, has received financial and other support from all local governmental agencies, school groups, principals, the superintendent’s office and administration personnel and others.

“All of these folks have made this possible,” said Bailey. “The Cherokee County Farmer’s Federation has been a player in this Farm City program. If there’s anything we might regret just a little bit is that we can only serve younger children for the tour. But these FFA officers and FCCLA officers look forward every year to being a part of this.”

Bailey noted the tireless efforts of Jacoway and Neyman in organizing the Farm City event every year.

“The whole committee is very pleased and honored that our county has received three state awards for best farm tour in our division for a county of our size,” said Bailey. “We’ve also been recognized on a national level. We have, in the past, had at least two children from our county whose calendar pictures have made the state calendar. I’ve noticed and I think most of you probably have too that just as a winning ball team will usually have increased support, our Farm City program has reached a stage of success where more and more people want to be a part of it.