Westco
and Land
O’Lakes provided a grant to the Garden County FFA to get new welders in our
shop. With these new machines, our
students can learn SMAW, GMAW, OFW and GTAW techniques. The goal is to provide students with an
opportunity to explore skills that can lead to future careers.
The
Garden County FFA is also a recipient of the Governers of Excellence NIFA
award. With this grant money, our
chapter wanted to increase students knowledge of entrepreneurship to encourage
our youth to return to our community and bring entrepreneurship opportunities
with them. The officers chose to host a
4-H Inventure Day training for our seventh, eighth, and ninth-grade
members. The students will be placed in
teams with an adult entrepreneur from our community as a mentor. The teams will then be given and widget that
they need to use to engineer a product and a marketing plan for that
product. The teams will then present
their product to a panel of judges. The winning team will earn a day in Lincoln
touring UNL’s Innovation Campus. This
opportunity will take February 26 at Garden County Schools.
Nebraska
Farm Bureau Foundation provides training to FFA leader on how to teach
agriculture literacy to elementary students.
Connecting Chapters asks FFA chapters to reach out to elementary
classrooms and teach the students about agriculture. Jaedon Ross, Tarah Ross, Maddi Lake, and
Kelsee Moffat visited our second-grade students. They read a book and lead a
lesson teaching the second graders about plants.
Our
chapter is also a participant in an Environmental Service Learning Program lead
by the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies.
Through this opportunity, the Environmental Science Students at Garden
County have learned about pollinators and native bees and their decline. They chose to create a pollinator garden that
will help educate our community about the importance of pollinators with their
grant funds. Three of our FFA members,
Austin Dormann, Chris Sciortino, and MacKenzie Richards, have been selected to
take part in 4-H Ag Innovators experience focusing on native bees. They will be provided training on March
23. Both of these programs will provide
our students with the knowledge needed plan and host a community outreach
experience.
Know Your
Well is a program developed by UNL and funded by the Nebraska Environmental
Trust that trains high school students well water testing. The Garden County FFA is excited to receive
this training and the opportunity to learn about the water of our county.
Our
students have also been watching rainbow trout eggs hatch, become alevin, and
then turn into fry. Through the Nebraska
Trout in the Classroom Program hosted by the Nebraska Game and Parks, we
received about 150 rainbow trout eggs.
The fish are now in the fry stage.
Our students will monitor the fish growth and in April release the fish
at a designated Nebraska Game and Parks location.
The
Garden County FFA has also had a successful season of competitions. At the District Twelve Leadership Development
Event, our freshmen Conduct of Chapter Meeting team placed second and qualified
for state. The member of the team is Nickolas Alworth, Trey Kirch, Kamry
Kramer, Kaylee Leach, Josie Marquez, Dutch Yates, and Mallory Zorn. Kara Barnhart also won the Cooperative Speach
Contest at LDEs and will represent our chapter at state. At our latest Career Development Contest, our
Agriculture Communications Team received a first-place purple and will be
competing at state. Madi Leach, Tarah
Ross, Kaitlyn Hunt, and Kayden Kramer developed a media plan that would promote
the agriculture safety day that our chapter cohost with the CreekValley and
South Platte FFA chapters for third-grade students in both Garden and Duel
Counties. Kara Barnhart earned another first place purple in Food Science and
along with her team consisting of Madi Leach, Kaylee Leach, and Mallory Zorn
place third at districts and will represent our district at the state
competition.
The
Garden County FFA is looking forward to participating in National FFA Week, one
more district CDE contest, Nebraska State FFA Convention, and finalizing our
current projects.
Left to Right: Kayden Kramer, Kaitlyn
Hunt, Tarah Ross, and Madi Leach