Greed Killed Environmental
Education
Folk’s Butterfly Farm is a direct result of an FFA Supervised
Agricultural Experience (SAE) project that Kristie (Folk) Good began during her
sophomore year of high school at Central Columbia. As a result of her SAE,
Kristie earned her Keystone degree, American degree and competed at the national
level in the STAR program in Agri-Business.
The farm has continued to grow and began to take on an educational
emphasis. The farm currently
supports many programs, including the FFA, which is where this all began.
We have been providing environmental education since 2010 when
we opened an educational exhibit at the Bloomsburg Fair.
We continued our educational purpose the following year by opening our
farm to school field trips. We offer
a full program that is hands-on, fun and educational that exceeds most school
curriculums. We provide programs for
in-school education including a mobile butterfly house and an interactive
caterpillar station.
In 2013, we added our mobile education exhibit to the
Pennsylvania Farm Show. We have
increased the size of our exhibit many times over the years; one year at the
request of the Farm Show to reduce line size.
We offer all aspects of the butterfly education at our exhibits including
habitat, anatomy, life cycle and conservation.
Our tenth year of operation at the Farm Show would have occurred in
January 2024.
The Friends of the Farm Show Foundation contacted us for this
year’s show with the demand of thirty percent (30%) of our gross with five
thousand dollars ($5,000.00) up front.
They want to call it profit sharing, but want the payment from gross.
We started our educational journey at two thousand five hundred dollars
($2,500.00) as our fee and voluntarily increased that number to five thousand
dollars ($5,000.00) and began providing education on the Lancaster Farming
public stage during the week of the Farm Show. We declined this offer at which
case they dropped to twenty percent (20%) of gross but did not include the
benefits in the Friends of the Farm Show Foundation brochure for the new dollar
level and we declined as well. We
also offered a flat rate of ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00) that was also
rejected. This is twice what we were
paying and is still excessive. We
had hoped to continue all the education that we provide.
We added the items from the brochure and returned it to them and they
rejected the offer. For the first
time in nine (9) years, Folk’s Butterfly Farm will not be at the Farm Show with
our educational exhibit.
In addition to the education in the exhibit and on the stage,
we provided an opportunity for FFA chapters to learn and earn in the classroom.
We provided milkweed seed in late August
for them to grow and prepare to raise monarchs in the classroom.
In Mid-November, we shipped monarch caterpillars to host on the milkweed
they have grown. They fed the
milkweed to get the caterpillars to chrysalis and then emerged them as adults.
This serves as both an educational opportunity for not only the class but
the entire school as many share the experience with the younger classes.
At the end of the experience, we buy the butterflies from them for use in
our exhibit. This served as an
educational fundraiser for the chapter.
During the week of the show, we provided opportunities for the students
to work in the butterfly exhibit as another opportunity for them to raise money
as we donate to the chapter for every hour worked. Giving chapters the
opportunity to follow the FFA motto of “Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning
to Live and Living to Serve” was something we enjoyed doing.
We also provide many other services and funding during the
year from the income from the Farm Show.
We support the FFA Creed Speaking competition, Ag in the Classroom at
Central Columbia, Outdoor Adventure Camp at Kocher Park, Butterfly day at the
Bloomsburg Children’s Museum and a local scholarship to a Central Columbia FFA
graduating senior going into the field of4e Agriculture. We also used the funds
to keep our school field trip cost lower than many other events that are chosen
for school field trips. On Monday of
the Farm Show which is also the day of the FFA Mid-Winter FFA Convention, any
advisor or FFA member in official dress paid one dollar ($1.00) to enter the
exhibit. Any time during the week,
we offered school groups a deep discount (about $1.10 per student) to enter the
exhibit. Both of these discounts
worked to provide additional access to our education at the farm show.
All of this environmental education has been silenced by GREED
by the Friends of the Farm Show Foundation board.
They chose to ignore the cost and time, which was approximately three
months in advance, that is required to raise the stock that allowed us to bring
the butterflies to the Farm Show. Please know we did everything in our power to
continue providing environmental education at the Farm Show, but have been shut
out.
We appreciate all of our patrons and have made many friends
over the last nine years we have been at the Pennsylvania Farm Show. We invite
you to come visit the butterflies at our farm when we open again in June of
2024.
Sincerely,
The Folk’s Butterfly Farm Family