Ag Ed at The Fairgrounds

12/22/2021

Thank you Upstate Farms for the delicious dairy products! We especially love a good glass of milk this holiday season. 🥛

After milk is produced on the farm, it needs to get to the processing plant where it is pasteurized, homogenized, and bottled up or processed into other delicious dairy products. Milk cooperatives are located throughout New York State, including this one – Upstate Farms. Upstate Niagara Co-op is responsible for the delicious Intense Milk line-up which is always a fan favorite. Do you have a favorite dairy product that you enjoy each day?

12/17/2021

National Maple Syrup day! Buddy Elf sure loves his Maple Syrup

🍁New York is 3rd in Maple Syrup Production in the United States
🍁Maple Syrup is rich in Potassium, Calcium + Magnesium
🍁Maple Syrup or Maple Sugar can be used in baking cookies, on your pork loin or as Buddy Elf Says, on your Spaghetti!
🍁Maple Syrup makes a great gift! Visit Wendel's Maple and More, Ploetz's Maple Syrup, or Jeremy Gernatt Maple Products to get those last minute sweet gifts!

What's your favorite way to use Maple Syrup?

06/23/2021

This past spring, the Erie County Agricultural Society created the Cow For Now program teaching classrooms all about dairy. This program was developed to continue the mission of the Society to educate about agriculture.

We couldn't have done it without the great partnerships with Reyncrest Farm, Upstate Farms and Milk For Health.

06/18/2021

Did you know June is ? 🐄

Cheese is made from milk that we mostly get from dairy cows.
Mozzarella is the most popular cheese for pizza.

What kind of cheese do you put on your pizza? Do you put extra cheese on yours?

06/18/2021

Check out these pre-fair summer camps!
Continuing agriculture education with two unique opportunities for our youth.

06/15/2021

Tomato seeds are usually started indoors. Then, after the seedlings are four to six weeks old, they are moved outdoors where they are placed in gardens or greenhouses. The plants are supported with stakes to keep them from falling to the wet ground.

🍅 Tomato plants take 75 to 85 days to produce ripe fruit.

06/14/2021

🍅 Pizza Sauce has lots of tomatoes goodness, it includes tomato sauce and tomato paste, tomatoes are rich in Vitamin A, C, K. Vitamin A is great for eye-sight and for the skin. Vitamin C is great for wound healing, gum health and metabolizing fats. Vitamin K is good for the ability of the blood to clot.

Tomato sauce contains 6 grams of fiber in each cup. Fiber helps with healthy digestion and bowel health.

06/12/2021

After kneading your pizza dough, give yourself a break and let the dough rest and rise.

➡️ The dough becomes easier to work with
➡️ It ferments
➡️ The yeast starts to eat the sugars in the flour creating bubbles. The bubbles are important as those stretch the gluten, giving the dough its airiness.

06/11/2021

Why do we 'knead" to knead pizza dough?
The real reason is to mix the flour and different liquids to form the dough. It also helps to hydrate it as kneading speeds up the absorption of the water in the flour.

You can knead the dough by hand or with a mixer, give it a try!

06/10/2021

Once the wheat is cleaned, it's on to milling.
Wheat is conditioned (washed and soaked in water) in order to toughen the bran as well as mellow the inner endosperm.

The kernel is then fed through roller mills which are paired and rotate inwards against each other. This is where the wheat kernels are broken down to flour. After the “first break” through the rollers, the separation of bran, endosperm and germ occurs. Throughout this process the flour is being sifted to ensure proper separation.

Then it's off to packing where the wheat flour is packaged into different sized bags and transported to its destination. 👨‍🍳

06/09/2021

Before wheat is ground into flour, there are a few steps it must go through in order to be free of foreign matter, or purified.

Step 1️⃣: Separator. The wheat passes over a series of metal screens. The wheat and other small particles pass through the screen while large objects such as sticks and rocks are removed.
Step 2️⃣: Aspirator (seen in the video below). This device works like a vacuum cleaner. The aspirator sucks up foreign matter which is lighter than the wheat and removes it.
Step 3️⃣: Additional ways. Other foreign objects are removed in various ways. One device, known as a disk separator, moves the wheat over a series of disks with indentations that collect objects the size of a grain of wheat. Smaller or larger objects pass over the disks and are removed.

EBM Manufacturing Aspirator cleans wheat with the power of air. When foreign material cannot be removed because its size and shape are similar to the wheat ...

06/08/2021

Have you ever looked out at a wheat field and thought, "wow, that's going to make some great pizza crust in the future"? Yeah? - We have too.

🌾 The majority of flour comes from wheat and is an important ingredient in order to make a pizza crust. When the wheat is harvested, it is stored in silos until it is needed for milling.