Manzanita Elementary School students joined in Ricetastic Day at the Schohr Ranch in Gridley. Here they show off their complimentary T-shirts in Manzanita School blue and gold while rice is harvested in the background. Pictured from left in the front row are Maddux Zavala, Cashten Waller, Hadley Stowe, Isabel Alejo, Francesca Maciel and Mia Wilburn. In the back row are Mahtab Kular, Sohan Kalkat, Mae Povey, Evan Kullar and Michelle Cable.

 

GRIDLEY, CA (MPG) - Excited children could be seen pointing and exclaiming as they piled out of the buses onto the Schohr Ranch on Thursday, Sept. 19 for Ricetastic Day.

In 2023, the Schohr family reinvigorated Ricetastic Day after years of the educational event being on hiatus.

UC Cooperative Extension representatives educate on the benefits of a balanced diet and how to incorporate rice in your diet. They provided tasty treats afterward.

This year saw an expansion, with first-grade students from Biggs, Richvale and Manzanita elementary schools joining Gridley students to learn about rice harvesting, milling process, equipment and more.

After an introduction by Tracy Schohr and her brother, Ryan, Schohr, Tracy Schohr walked the students through the harvesting process. Gridley FFA students helped her by holding up images of each stage of harvest as she explained it to eager students.

Zoe, a first-grader at McKinley Elementary School, smiles as she gets to touch the spines of a combine on display. The spikes look like metal but are actually a hard plastic that is bendable.

Multiple booths run by teachers, community members and professionals from the UC Cooperative Extension provided demonstrations on rice, from milling to harvesting, tastings and more for the curious first-graders.

Groups of children cycled through stations where they were read “Daddy’s Got Dirt,” written by local rice farmer Matthew Sligar for his daughters so that they could understand his profession and what they saw him doing while in the fields.

Students learned about “rice babies” or young rice: the short, green carpet-like rice seen in the rice paddies during the summer. They also did the “Ricetastic workout,” colored pictures of farm equipment and made crafts out of rice.

Amelia Mattos, Fiona Waterbury and Jacob Hale smile as they munch on rice cakes with peanut butter, one of the rice-based food products they taste-tested at Ricetastic Day.

Large harvesting equipment was on display. Volunteers explained how the gigantic combine machines harvest rice, separating it and sending the rice through the auger to the bank-out wagon while the spreader disposes of the excess organic material out the back.

After visiting each station, students ate lunch as the Schohrs fired up a combine that had been on site and took to the fields, harvesting rice during the event.

Since the Gridley community is so ag-based, Ricetastic Day helps fill in the blanks for many children curious to know what is happening in the fields during the late summer/fall months.

 “We live in a community that is very focused on agriculture,” said McKinley School Principal Rhiannon Treat.

Retired preschool teacher Sue Orme reads a book written by local rice farmer Matthew Sligar to children as they move through the stations at Ricetastic Day. Here she acts out the movement of plane wings as she reads the page where the crop duster plants rice.

Events such as Ricetastic Day help students gain exposure to ag at a much earlier age than FFA programs, which are typically available at the high school level.

Ricetastic Day helps students get “a larger sense of what is happening in the community,” Treat said.

Gridley Unified School District Superintendent Justin Kern added, “This is what our community is really all about.

Retired preschool teacher Tinker Storm helps at Ricetastic Day, showing students how rice and other organic material travel through a combine, with the excess rice material coming out the back after it is sorted.

It’s a rural farming community, and for the kids to be able to see it firsthand, this is a pretty cool idea.”

Students from all schools appeared to be having fun while educators and locals helped plant the seeds of ag knowledge in their young minds.

Gridley High School FFA students help at Ricetastic Day, manning booths, volunteering and holding up images of each stage of the rice growing and harvesting process as seen here. Tracy Schohr, left, acts out each stage of the harvest process as she educates local elementary school students during Ricetastic Day at her family's ranch.