Positive farm outlook and an award from Medicine Hat College

Neubauer helps teach students about about food production, farm operation management and entrepreneurship through a number of initiatives.

Included are the Irvine School’s Agricultural Discovery Centre within the Prairie Rose School Division, and collaboration with the Medicine Hat College to develop a number of courses through the Extended Learning Department.

An alumni of Medicine Hat College’s educational assistant program, she feels it gave her the foundation to educate children on agriculture, that she has continued to develop.

“As a lifelong learner the opportunity to partner and work with so many amazing educators in our community has just allowed me to grow and, and learn and diversify and continue to innovate and inspire,” Neubauer said.

Neubauer appreciates the educators that have supported herm as well as the support from her family.

“The mission that I’m on to teach kids all about where their food comes from. It quite simply keeps me awake at night and gets me out of bed in the morning,” Neubauer said.

“It’s my purpose, and I think that it’s over time been impactful and it’s got people thinking about agriculture,” she added.

“My family has been absolutely my foundation when you open up your farm gates to thousands of kids a year, that comes with a certain amount of challenge. My husband is forever patient with me taking over buildings so that his equipment parks outside, so we can transform a building into a classroom.”

Neubauer said her kids have also shown an interest in helping her.

“Quite often when my kids are home, they ask, is there a tour just because then they manage their day around it,” Neubauer said.

“One of the really neat things that I’ve been able to do through this adventure is when our kids were younger, they actually helped as facilitators as well. So creating that peer to peer learning opportunity for kids was really great for them to develop, leadership and public speaking,” she added.

“My special thanks to the college, the admin team and the Board of Governors for this very prestigious award. I am forever grateful and incredibly humbled by it.”

With all of their crops now emerging from the ground, and the cattle on the community pastures which according to Neubauer are in great shape from the recent rain, the next step is weed management of the crops.

“In crop spraying will occur this next week. Basically, we want to give our crops everything we can so that they can reach their full potential and then the rest is kind of up to mother nature,” Neubauer said.

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed and roll the dice. It’s a little bit like Vegas when you’re in agriculture. But, but so far so good.”

Neubauer’s work has spotlighted farm life for more than 22,000 students from across Southeast Alberta.

The recent honorary applied degree added to a list of awards and honours she has achieved through her passion for agricultural education.

by Jesse Gill

Positive farm outlook and an award from Medicine Hat College

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