Companion Resources

This activity details instruction for making butter in a small baby-food sized jar.

Never. Not a chance. Annalisa wouldn't dream of kissing Luella the cow, even though her mother kisses her every day after singing her a song and milking her. Still, inquisitive Annalisa is awfully interested in milking Luella, and one day she sneaks off and does everything just the way her mother does - except for the kiss on the nose. Will Annalisa's innate curiosity get the best of her?

When Annabelle gives birth to her calf, she also begins to produce milk. The milk is then processed into cheese, and from the cheese, pizza is made. An excellent nonfiction look at milk production.

Dairy cows are amazing animals. This printable student reader takes kids through the basics of milk production, how dairy cows are cared for, important vocabulary, and why milk is part of a healthy diet.

Alice doesn't need a weather forecast to tell if it's going to snow. She can feel it in her toes and elbows and nose. Each time she feels a twitch or a tingle, she warns her neighbors. 'There's snow coming,' she tells Etta and Gretta Grillo. 'I can feel it in my toe!' Like Alice's other neighbors, the Grillo sisters laugh and ignore her warning. But sure enough, the snow falls and catches everyone by surprise— everyone that is except Alice, who has loaded in her supplies. But now she feels a big snowstorm coming. And still her neighbors ignore her warnings. What will Alice do?

A day comes, after the leaves have fallen and the wild geese have left for warmer places, when the air holds its breath, still and full of expectation. Snow is coming, and soon farmland and forest, ground and sky will be transformed. This story tells about two brothers waiting and watching for the first snow of winter. *This book is no longer in print, but is readily available through the Public Library System.

The 2024 Food and Farm Facts is a 32-page booklet filled with the latest Ag Census data, which has been analyzed by economists from the American Farm Bureau Federation. This data has been organized into easy-to-read graphics. Topics include Consumers, Modern Farmers, Trade & Economics, Environment, Production, and an Agricultural History Timeline.

On September 6, 1936, in one of his famous fireside chat radio broadcasts, President Franklin Roosevelt describes the conditions he observed firsthand on a tour of the many states devastated by drought.

This newsreel-style documentary chronicles the Dust Bowl with interviews from people (primary sources) who lived through the "dirty thirties." The images linger well after the film ends. An excellent resource to use when studying the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, or the Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The renowned Walter Cronkite narrates the 23-minute film available on DVD or YouTube. Order this DVD online from agclassroomstore.com.

On May 9th, 1934 a giant storm rose up out of the great plains. A menacing wall of soil and dust headed east across the land, thick enough to block out the sun. This 4-minute video gives a good account of this disaster through video footage and photographs.

*Recommended Common Core Reading First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads-driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

This highly readable portrait is about the Okies driven to California by the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s and the formidable hardships they faced. The desperation of their lives in the Midwest is described and then we follow the Okes on their trek across the western United States to the promise of work in California, where their hopes are dashed. Weedpatch Camp is the farm-labor camp built by the federal government, that educator Leo Hart creates a federal emergency school. The book includes period black and white photographs depicting the hardships and the school.