![Volunteers from the Crestview Rotary Club bagged grits, cornmeal and sweet potatoes for the Farm-City Week Food Distribution. [SPECIAL TO THE NEWS BULLETIN]](http://127.0.0.1/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ghows-DA-5ef902e0-d507-18fe-e053-0100007f33aa-b4be16a7.jpeg)
It is through teamwork that truly great things are accomplished. Last week was a shining example of wonderful things that come when people in our community unite.
National Farm-City Week is traditionally held the week before Thanksgiving. This week celebrates the hard work that goes into supplying cities with farm products.
In Okaloosa County, we celebrate this week by giving fresh farm products to needy families in our community. This is the seventh year that Okaloosa's University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension has partnered with Okaloosa County Farm Bureau to organize this event.
The event includes the "World’s Smallest Parade" across Crestview. It consists of two tractors pulling trailers of produce up Main Street and through Crestview to the Woodlawn Baptist Church parking lot, making a pit stop at Richbourg School to pass out sweet potatoes to the students there.
Many other organizations helped make this event possible.
Woodlawn Baptist Church hosted the food distribution and supplied volunteers to help distribute food items. Volunteers from Crestview Rotary Club spent several hours bagging and loading grits, cornmeal and sweet potatoes for the event. Volunteers from USDA NRCS and Crestview Rotary also helped distribute food at the event. UF-IFAS West Florida Research and Education Center donated collards, fresh ground grits and cornmeal.
Sirmon Farms supplied the sweet potatoes at a discount. Publix donated breads and baked goods. And, as usual, Mr. Ferguson at Construction Sales and Services supplied the tractors to pull the produce across town to the Woodlawn parking lot.
I enjoy seeing our community organizations join together to do good things. I look forward to working with these great people again next year!
Jennifer Bearden is an agent at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Extension office in Crestview.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Farm-City Week celebrates agriculture