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11/21/2008 - Farm-City Week events bring rural, urban communities together

Farm-City Week events bring rural, urban communities together

By Darryn Simmons

As a farmer, Dianne Gaines knows that she can't succeed without the help of the urban community.

And the urban community can't succeed without help from farmers, she said.

To highlight that relation­ship, the Autaugaville resident is taking part in National Farm-City Week activities.

"We want to bring both sec­tions together," said Gaines, who operates Gaines Farm.

Farm-City Week is held each November and features farm machinery and agricultural dis­plays and other related activi­ties.

The theme this year for Farm-City Week is "Pathway to Pro­gress," she said, adding that there are plenty of opportuni­ties this week to show the pro­gress that has been made in farming and where products go once they leave the farm.

On Tuesday, third-grade stu­dents from across the area tour­ed a trailer at the R.H. Kirkpa­trick Agricultural Pavilion in Autaugaville that showed differ­ent farming equipment over the years, including a table-top cot­ton gin on loan from Auburn Montgomery. They also got to see different farm animals.

"It's an awesome day, very ed­ucational," Gaines said.

Mike Lamar, chairman of the Autaugaville Farm-City Com­mittee, said that the National Farm-City Week has been around since the 1950s and the area's celebration has been going on for more than 20 years.

"It's educational across the board," he said. "It's not only the youngsters. We want to edu­cate everyone on the interde­pendence that exists."

Gaines agreed.

"On our farm, we grow cotton, which isn't in a consumable form when it leaves here," she said. "It goes through a lot of hands, like the truckers who transport it, the spinners that help turn it into the sheets and towels and other things. We can't live without the others taking the raw materials we provide and making them into something, and others can't live without those raw materials we provide."

National Farm-City Week is sponsored by the National Farm-City Council in Washing­ton. The Gaines family and the Young Farmers Group started organizing Farm-City activities in Autaugaville in 1982.

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