By Sharon Omahen
University of Georgia
On the old Green Acres TV show, Oliver Douglas
constantly turned
to his county agent for answers to gardening questions. Douglas
is a fictional oldie, but urbanites moving to the country and
turning to county Extension agents for help are real and now.
“I’d say 85 percent of the calls I get are from people who are
either new to the county or new to Georgia,” said Jean Walter,
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension coordinator for
Jasper County.
“They hear about the Extension office by word-of-mouth or from a
radio gardening show like Walter Reeves’ show on WBS (750 AM)
radio,” Walter said.
Identifying pests
This week, Walter’s office is busy sending soil samples to be
analyzed on the UGA Athens campus. A calloused fruit-tree branch
lies on a corner of her desk beside a dog-eared wildlife manual.
“I have to diagnose this fruit tree branch first,” she said.
“Then I have to help with another squirrel call.”
Walter and more than 300 other county agents work through UGA
Cooperative Extension, an outreach program of the UGA colleges of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Family and Consumer
Sciences. UGA Extension also delivers 4-H youth programming
across Georgia.
Besides helping with gardening questions, county agents field
calls on many topics, including wildlife damage control.
“We’ve gotten a lot of calls about squirrels in attics over the
past month,” she said. “In the fall, we get calls about how to
get rid of bats.”
Walter said soil and water samples are the “bread and butter” for
her office. “We do lots and lots of soil tests,” she said. “And
it doesn’t stop when we send off the sample for testing.”
Personal attention
Homeowners in Jasper County call Walter when they get their soil
sample results. “Everyone wants me to explain the test to them,”
she said. “Once I meet a person one time, I make sure they know
what we can do to help them. And I get them on our mailing list
so they know about upcoming workshops and events.”
In northwest Georgia, Hall County Extension Coordinator Billy
Skaggs often helps ‘reverse snow birds,’ Florida transplants who
come to north Georgia to enjoy the mountains in winter. These
part-time Georgians have questions about native trees and plants
they aren’t accustomed to.
Skaggs fields calls from first-time homeowners, too. They need
landscaping advice like when to prune and how often to fertilize,
he said.
The population explosion in Hall County has increased demand for
Extension education. “Gwinnett County seems to be spilling over
into our county,” Skaggs said. “Hall County is home to about
170,000 people now. The population was 90,000 in 1990.”
The people boom has changed the county’s landscape and the type
of phone calls the Extension office gets.
Reaching out to help people
“More and more people from nonfarm backgrounds are moving to the
area,” Skaggs said. “You used to see horse and cow pastures when
you drove through the county. Now you see more and more new
houses and new businesses.”
But people moving in haven’t pushed agriculture out. “We’re still
the second-largest agricultural county in the state,” he said.
Franklin County is No. 1.
To reach these new residents, Skaggs writes a weekly newspaper
column and hosts a weekly radio call-in show.
“A lot of people find out about (us) by reading a column or
listening to the radio show,” he said. “With the sheer number of
people moving in, we have to rely on the media to help us get
information out to the public.”
To contact your county agent, just call 1-800-ASK-UGA1 (275-8421)
from anywhere in Georgia. You’ll be connected to the UGA
Extension office in your county.
But you don’t have to go to your county office for help. You can
find the latest UGA Extension information online at
www.ugaextension.com.
