“I like seeing how happy they are to be around each station and learn,” said Zarek McPherson a Henley High School FFA member who helped at the Farm Expo. He went the extra mile, volunteering to dress up as a cow for the event. “They needed people to wear the costume. I jumped in.”

Kylee Jorgensen, another Henley FFA student, said she remembered coming to the Farm Expo as a fourth-grader.

“It’s really cool to see it go full circle,” she said. “I used to be one of these kids and knew some of the older kids. Now I’m one of the older kids.”

FFA students from Henley, Lost River and Bonanza helped at the event, leading groups of students to the 17 booths and giving presentations.

At other booths community organizations, farmers and 4-H groups gave presentations.

“I really like what I do,” said Mia Griffith, who ran the pig booth with her fellow Midland Porkies 4-H Club members Hannah Hughes and Kieryn Ruda. “We like showing pigs. It’s nice to talk to our kids and tell them about what we do.”

“I just love teaching kids about something I’m passionate about, my love for the dairy industry,” said Megan Sprute, 2018 first alternate Oregon Dairy princess ambassador.

She was accompanied by Sitaly DeJong, who lives on the JD Dairy.

“I like to explain how the cows get milk, how they grow, what they have to eat each day and how much milk they produce,” she said.

Students from the Klamath County School District, the Klamath Falls City Schools, Lake County School District, Tulelake School District and private and home attended the Farm Expo. KCSD elementary schools included Stearns, Bonanza, Henley, Keno, Gilchrist, Chiloquin, Merrill, Malin, Peterson, Shasta and Ferguson.

Photos of the 2018 Klamath County Farm Expo are available in an album on the Klamath County School District Facebook page, or by clicking here.

On the afternoon and evening of Feb. 21, the Farm Expo opened to the public and held the second-annual Klamath Kids Iron Chef Challenge. Six teams, made up of 18 girls total, competed in a television- style cooking competition before a crowd of onlookers. The teams had 20 minutes to make a healthy potato salad from the ingredients provided, plus a secret ingredient revealed halfway through competition.

This event is put on by the Oregon State University Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center. Judges Richard Vierra, culinary arts director for Klamath Community College, Nichole Baley, OSU faculty research assistant, and Katie Swanson, owner of Sweet Union Farm, tasted and evaluated each dish the competitors prepared.

Timber Oakley, 11, Aireal Allen, 10, and Hannah Rabe, 11, made up team “Beef” and took home first place with their potato salad. During competition, they had a moment when they thought they would lose it all. They accidentally spilled the salt right into the potato salad. But the savvy chefs balanced out the dish, and even credited the salt to their win.

They said the competition was fun, but tough.

“We heard ‘four minutes’ and we thought we still had 15 minutes left,” Timber said.

“I was nervous,” said Aireal.

“When we went to the judges, that was the most frightening,” said Hannah. “The idea of having to go up in front of everybody and answer questions.”

A close runner up was team Chef Gals, made up of Kathryn Nelson and Alyssa Tollefson. Third place went to team Cow Girls, made up of Gabriella Keyes and Emily Nordin