FLEMINGSBURG — Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin visited Fleming County on Friday where he served as grand marshal of the Fleming County Tractor Parade.

The 16th annual Tractor Parade in Fleming County brought more than 200 tractors and other farming vehicles into Flemingsburg on Friday to celebrate the farming culture that is well known in the area. This parade is the culmination of Fleming County’s Agricuture Education Week.

“It started off as FFA Week in February,” Vice President of Hinton Mills Adam Hinton said, who helps coordinate the parade. “For about the first eight years it would be a cold, February morning and there would be about 40 different tractors. And when we looked around there would be about 40 people waving at us, frozen and they would all answer to the name ‘mom.’ We decided over the years to move to a little bit better weather, better time of year, and it’s turned into this huge Agricultural Education Week.”

While the parade has had it’s fair share of notable individuals, both local and state, who have served as grand marshal, this is the first time a governor has filled this role. Bevin began his visit at the Kentucky Welding Institute, before speaking at Fleming County High School and then attending a brief town hall meeting.

The last place he visited before taking his place in the parade was Fleming County Farm Supply, where scores of people in and around the community came to greet him.

“The nature of my job is that I’m always somewhere, doing something in or on behalf of the commonwealth,” Bevin said. “Being up here in Fleming County and this whole region is meaningful; and the Hinton family, this mill, what they have done with the feed, but now the whole store, now the welding institution — so many different ventures pouring back into this community.”

“I’ve been to the welding institute several times now and it just continues to grow, continues to pull people from across Kentucky and across this country,” he said. “There’s very few, if any other things like it in the country. The quality of training that they’re giving these kids, men and women alike, that come out of there having the opportunity to make six figure livings all over the country — it’s impressive and it just keeps getting better and better.”

Hinton said that for many this will be a welcome to Fleming County for Bevin: for Bevin himself it will be a welcome back as he has been to Fleming County three times over the past 14 months.

To Bevin, ever since he was young he had a close relationship with agriculture. So when he was asked to serve as grand marshal for the tractor parade he said it was like going back to his roots.

“The first thing I ever learned how to drive in my life was an old Farmall Cub, a tractor, so for me it was just fun,” he said. “Walking in here (Fleming County Farm Supply), there’s a certain smell; you can smell the sweet feed, you can smell the molasses and it just sort of takes me back to a kid raising livestock and I just enjoy the day up here.”

Having an event in Fleming County that appears to grow each year, all for the sake of agriculture education, shows how much the industry means to this region.

“This is, I believe, the biggest thing that happens in Fleming County each year,” Hinton said. “If you go down and see this parade, you’ll see over 200 tractors and participants that are lined up, all of the schools in our school system participate in some capacity and watch the parade. It’s just a great time, it’s very enjoyable; if you see the looks on the children, you’ll understand how important it is. Really it’s to start conversations about the importance of agriculture to our past, our present and our future. Agriculture is a huge part of Kentucky’s economy and it’s a very integral part of Fleming County’ economy in the region.”

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Jonathan Wright

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