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Fair Board director promotes opportunities for non-farm kids to enjoy working with animals
Trumbull County Fair celebrates
By Ed Runyan
BAZETTA
2With the number of acres of farm land getting smaller, it could mean a reduction in the opportunities for young people to carry on Trumbull County’s farming tradition. But Turon and others are dedicated to seeing that doesn’t happen.
Turon has heard lots of people say they have older relatives who were farmers, and they frequently have a fondness for it as a result.
“That’s getting fewer and farther apart,” said Turon. But that doesn’t mean young people should be deprived of the benefits of farm life, such as working with animals, Turon said.
One way is for a young person to lease an animal from a farmer, meet the requirements of caring for it, then show it at the fair.
Preston Sheets of Bazetta Township, whose home on Lakeshore Drive near the Trumbull County Fairgrounds is suburban, has leased dairy cows for three years from the Liming farm in Lordstown to show at the fair.
Sheets, 15, who attends Lakeview High School and hopes to study veterinary science or medicine, has been interested in farm animals since he was about 6, he said.
His aunt and uncle have a grain farm, so he’s had a lot of exposure to farm life and helped feed animals at the fair even though he was not in 4-H, he said.
Sheets said one of the things he enjoys about showing animals is the competition, which is evident around the barns, as you watch participants sizing up the competition.
“It’s at the end, when you get to see who wins,” Sheets said of what he likes about 4-H.
Another thing Sheets likes is the interaction and bonding he has experienced with the animals.
Sheets said he has a special relationship with a red and white Holstein. He was the only person who ever worked with her, and the Holstein’s reaction to him indicates she remembers him.
“I don’t even say anything,” Sheets said of walking near the animal. “She just comes up to me. After two years of showing her, she remembers who you are.”
Mary Liming, whose son, Lamar Liming, now runs the Liming family farm on Austintown-Warren Road in Lordstown, said she enjoys knowing Sheets because of his intelligence.
“He’s a wonderful boy. He comes up and fiddles with them,” she said of the cows.
Turon said he likewise has established relationships with the young people who have leased animals from him.
“We have two girls who lease from us. We’re really good friends with them now,” he said.
Sheets said he’s also grateful for the friendships he has with several kids in his 4-H club from other school districts who he sees at montly meetings and for one week at the fair.
Turon notes that even kids with nonrural homes have found ways to keep animals at home.
“Anybody in the county can raise a pen of chickens, even a pig or sheep,” Turon said. “You can build a pen in the garage for a pig or a goat.” He said his wife, a teacher, knows a lot of kids who go to Middlefield Cardinal schools who have “garage pigs.”
Turon said he sees kids who love farm life even if they don’t live on one. One example is a friend of his 10-year-old son who lives near their farm.
“He loves to scoop manure. These kids think it’s pretty cool,” he said, adding that the boy’s father has said, “I’m glad he comes here and slops around. I’d never want to do it.”