The FFA ExperienceBy Haley Stark
Press Crew January 6, 2015 Not all high school programs give you the opportunity to travel across the nation and have hands-on experience with the very things you want to go to college for, but luckily for me I found the FFA.
This past April sophomore Baleigh Oliver, junior Mason Bishop, senior Brandon Oliver and I accomplished our goal- we were the State Champions in Livestock Evaluation. With the National judging contest our next destination at the end of October we quickly decided that our state championship title was only scratching the surface and we would achieve top five in the nation. Fortunately our Agricultural Advisor and coach, Brett Brandner, shared our competitive nature and planned a summer trip to two livestock judging camps, one at Iowa State University and the other at Kansas State University with several stops along the way. After two months of speaking to local supporters and promoting our team we successfully raised more than enough money to travel. On Saturday, June 7, we departed for Iowa and spent our first day in the agricultural heartland on a 2000-acre farm and received a first-hand experience in production agriculture with the most interesting person we met on the trip, crop farmer and hog producer Dennis Gienger. Mr. Gienger, along with his son who also became a farmer, showed our team the ins and outs of Iowa agriculture. We toured their commercial hog barns that housed over 10,000 head of swine and later visited Mr. Gienger’s swine nursery that contained over 500 fifteen-pound piglets. The rest of the day was a spent climbing 100-foot grain bins, driving millions of dollars’ worth of farming equipment and eating a supper of homegrown pork with the Gienger family. For me, the Gienger’ family farm was one of the best experiences from the trip. Not only did we see a completely different avenue of agriculture in comparison to Florida, but we also found a friendship in Mr. Gienger that was truly amazing. He even went to the length of extending Brandon Oliver and I internships with the Tama County Pork Producers after we graduate high school. From there we traveled to Iowa State University where our team stayed for three days with other high school livestock judgers from Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. Here, the collegiate livestock team and coach worked with us to improve our live animal evaluation skills as well as improve our oral reasons that each member must give defending their class placing. Lastly, before heading west to Kansas, our team visited Hawkeye Breeders Service, an established housing and collecting facility that gathered, stored and shipped cattle semen for independent cattlemen looking to artificially inseminate their livestock. We even got to shadow the manager of the collection barn who showed us the steps to collecting cattle semen. Now as Florida contrasts from Iowa, Iowa contrasts from Kansas. The deep greens and black soil of Iowa slowly transformed into the rolling hills of cattle-country Kansas. Although I may be a hog kind of girl at heart, I fell in love with Kansas and the college we toured before our last livestock camp, Butler Community College. Never would I have imagined that this trip would have given me a clear direction for college, but sure enough it did. Our trip rounded out with a two-day camp at Kansas State University that covered similar topics at ISU, but gave us more experience and practice that only further improved our skills. Our very last stop, however, was at Nichols Farm, a franchised family farm that markets bulls, semen and embryos throughout the world. We spent some time chatting with Dave Nichols, founder of the business who started his purebred Angus herd at a young thirteen years of age. Although I was sad to board my plane headed back to Florida, I am beyond thankful for the opportunity I received this past summer. It’s hard to say which state I favored, but I’m proud to say I’ll be attending college in Kansas next fall thanks to this trip. The experiences and practice our team acquired over a ten day span is truly once-in-a-lifetime. With the national contest around the corner on October 29 in Louisville Kentucky, I am reminded what an amazing program I landed in. FFA and agriculture are truly life changing. |
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