Big Red Barn welcomes students during annual school tours
(Seguin) – Fourth graders from at least seven area counties will be traveling to Seguin these next three week for lessons in Agriculture. Monday was the launch of the Texas Agricultural Education and Heritage Center’s Ag Tours. The center, better known as the Big Red Barn, has been welcoming children for the last 20 years.
Welcoming this year’s batch of students is Big Red Barn Director Kay Willmann. Willmann says the tours are a huge part of the center’s vision which is to preserve, protect and educate the public on the importance of agriculture.
“These events that we have with the children, I guess officially, was called the Agriculture Awareness Fair. I call it Agriculture Awareness Days because to me, it makes a little more sense because we are not having fair type of events but years ago, before we did this, the county fair did Ag Days with kids, and I think they still do some things there but it’s not quite to the extent that we do it. We are running kids through 12 different sessions here every day. We have water, gardening, horses, farm animals or barnyard animals, poultry, cotton, GVEC is here to teach about electricity; we have some wildlife teaching going on. We have field crops going on, dairy cow, obviously, nutrition and pecans,” said Willmann.
Willmann says the center remains a unique gem in the region for the promotion of agriculture and looks forward every year to welcoming students from throughout the area.
“We start with Seguin and Navarro. It’s Guadalupe County so we will have the Seguin school system. We will have Marion along with them and the Navarro school system and next week, we start off with Karnes County and then we have Lavaca County and then we have two days of La Vernia which is Wilson County and New Braunfels Christian Academy always comes. Then the following week, I have two days of Wilson County. I have one day that is Southwest Prep and one of the home-schooling groups here and the last day is Goliad and San Marcos gifted and talented children,” said Willmann.
Among those on hand to help support these tours is Matt Miranda, Guadalupe County extension agent and 4H and youth development coordinator. Miranda says over the years, he has witnessed how these tours have made an impact in these children’s lives.
“Kids aren’t raised around agriculture anymore. I’m from San Antonio. We were way out of the agriculture sector in the middle of San Antonio and a lot of these kids have grown in urban settings as well and so this is a way for them to learn where their food, their clothing, everything comes from – that way they know a gallon of milk doesn’t just come from HEB or their clothes just don’t show up at Walmart,” said Miranda.
Meanwhile, the volunteerism that goes behind this effort is priceless. Willmann says it takes a total team to welcome the hundreds of students through their doors.
“Lots of volunteers. We will be dead in the water without volunteers because it takes 25 to 30 a day to do this,” said Willmann.
Willmann says it’s also important to thank the Farm Bureau and other supporters who continue to support these tours year after year.
“We charge $3 a child to help pay for all of the materials because we send them home with a bag of materials, but Guadalupe County is paying for their kids. They scholarship it. All the outlying counties do the same thing. All the Farm Bureaus support this and they pay those fees so the children’s parents, they don’t have to pay for it just the (school) transportation to get them here,” said Willmann.
Willmann says this year marks the 20th anniversary for the school tours. She says the school tours were among the first educational programs launched at the non-profit barn located at 390 Cordova Rd.