October
- National Pork Month
- National 4-H Month
- World Food Day
- Halloween Originated as End-of-Harvest Festival
- National Cooperative Month
- National Pizza Month
- Oklahoma Vegetable of the Month: Pumpkin
- Oklahoma Fruit of the Month: Apple
- Earth Science Week
- Oktoberfest
- Agriculture in Art: Pigs, 1854 by John Frederick Herring Sr.
- Poem for October by Robert Frost
Why leaves change color
The leaves are falling. It's time to start your sheet-composted planting bed.
Students keep journals describing the trees in the schoolyard or in their own yards as the leaves begin to change colors.
October 8 is Columbus Day
Columbus Day is significant to American pork producers because swine came to the New World with Columbus on his second voyage. In his narrative of that voyage, Michele de Cuneo reported that pigs, in particular, "grew over there to a superlative degree."
In addition to pigs, Columbus loaded his fleet of 17 ships with horses, cows, oxen, sheep, goats, hens, dogs and cats. He brought wheat seed and plants, barley, radishes, onions, peas, melon, sugar cane, broad beans, lettuce, leeks and parsley "to try out the ground."
Students write and perform skits about the animals on Columbus' second voyage.
In some US cities Columbus Day has been replaced with Indigenous People Day in honor of natives who were here when Columbus arrived. Students will write short essays arguing for or against this issue.
The foods listed above that Columbus brought to the New World were part of what historians call the "Columbian Exchange." Students will research to find foods from the New World that explorers took back to Europe.
October is Archaeology Month
Oklahoma has one of the most important archaeological sites in the US at Spiro Mounds. Read about agriculture among the Spiro people in this lesson:
Barbed Wire was invented October 27, 1873
Farmer Joseph F. Glidden applied for a patent on barbed wire on October 27, 1873. Learn more with Don't Fence Me In.
Writing Prompt: Students use online or library sources to research the impact of the invention of barbed wire on the American frontier.
Pigs, 1854 by John Frederick Herring Sr.