MOUNT VERNON — The Heart of Ohio Tour will return this October bigger and better than ever.
Sponsored by the Knox Soil & Water Conservation District and The Ohio State University Extension Knox County, the tour showcases agriculture in Knox County and gives participants the chance to get acquainted with rural activities, as well as the agricultural industry and the various producers in the area.
“We have 14 stops on this year’s tour,” said Rob Clendening, program administrator of KSWCD. “This is a bigger tour than those in past years. We had additional help with the planning committee this year, and we’re trying our best to accommodate as many participants as possible.”
This year’s tour will take place Oct. 2 and 3, from 1 to 6 p.m., and will begin in Mount Vernon and travel west to the northwest part of the county.
“We try to keep track of where the tour has gone in previous years and then rotate it around, focusing on one general area in the tour; and we believed it was time to focus on this area,” said Clendening.
“There is a little bit of everything in this year’s tour,” said Clendening, noting that there will be stops highlighting vegetable producers, a variety of livestock and grain producers, Kokosing Construction, Fredericktown Farmers Market, a maple syrup producer, the Knox County Agricultural Museum and the Fredericktown Historical Museum, among others.
“When selecting stops for the tour, the committee will sit down and look at maps, determining what businesses and agricultural products might be available in that area and then look for volunteers,” said Clendening.
Participants traveling through the self-guided tour will have a map to guide them to each numbered destination. A special section featuring information on each stop, as well as specific addressees, on the tour will be included in both the print and e-edition of the Mount Vernon News on Wednesday, Sept. 29. Information will also available on the Internet by visiting www.visitknoxohio.org.
Also contributing their efforts to the tour is the Knox County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Our role in this project is destination marketing,” said Pat Crow, executive director of the CVB. “Any activity that brings people to the area is what we have an interest in.”
The bureau gathers information and distributes it in various media forms, including their own Web site link. “Our interest is to bring people in from outside of Knox County,” said Crow.
For more information, call Clendening at 393-6724 or Crow at 392-6102.
