Published: November 26, 2009 11:08 pm      

Ag bureau honors member of Vale Wood family

LORETTO — The marketing director for her family-owned Vale Wood Farms has won the 2009 Young Farmer and Rancher “Excellence in Ag” Award of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

Carissa Itle Westrick received the award recently at the bureau’s 59th an-nual meeting in Hershey.

“It’s a very nice honor,” she said in an interview earlier this week.

“It’s very humbling because there’s so many people involved in agriculture who do so many great things.”

The Farm Bureau said Westrick was named for her involvement and leadership in farming. Each year, she takes some 4,000 school students on tours of the dairy operation and she participates in other events such as hayrides.

“We really do feel a responsibility to teach local consumers about our agricultural heritage,” she said. “We’ve done some university tours and senior citizen tours as well. Some weekends, we’re open to the public.”

Westrick, of Ebensburg, said she tries to get across to children where food comes from, beyond the refrigerator and the grocery store. The importance of farm operations to the health of the local economy also is stressed.

Vale Wood Farms, with 200 cows, sells its milk at stores and has 15 trucks to provide home delivery to thousands of customers.

“We’re pretty vertically integrated,” Westrick said.

The farm has 35 full-time employees in addition to 15 to 20 part timers.

In terms of the name, Vale Wood, “It’s a wooded valley we’re in,” Westrick said. “My great-grandfather, C.A. Itle, was being clever in 1933.”

The farm has been in the family since 1842.

As the statewide winner, Westrick won an all-expenses-paid trip to the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in Seattle in January, $500 from Dodge and $250 in vouchers toward lodging and registration for a state Farm Bureau leadership conference.

The other finalists for the award were Drew and Trisha Bowman of York County.

For more information on Vale Wood or to schedule a tour, call Westrick at (800) 861-6455.