Planting for this year and beyond!

 We planted some grass seed last week around campus in anticipation that God would water the seed for us!

 On Tuesday, April 29th, we hosted an FFA Fun Night and invited any interested students to come check out what FFA has to offer.  We had close to 30 students attend and hope that many of them will be able to join us for the 2014-2015 school year!

 The food consisted of delicious, grilled hot dogs and indoor smores!  The microwave replaced the campfire for roasting the marsh-mellows.

All in all, it was a great night of celebration and sharing about the last year.  Next year we are expanding our course offerings to include classes in plant science, animal science, leadership, agri-business, and a middle school edition of "Exploring South Dakota Agriculture".  Students need to be enrolled in at least 1 semester of an Ag class to be eligible for FFA.  Again, a reminder to join us for Awards Night on May 8th-hope to see you there!

The Finish Line!

 As we head into our last month of the school year, we are enjoying the beautiful spring weather we have been blessed with!  Our classes have been planting trees and working on landscaping projects on campus the last couple of weeks since the convention.

The end of the school year is always busy for the students and our class times will be limited as the students compete in track meets, rodeo, and help with bull sales.  We are finishing up our leadership study on Shackleton this week with a paper examining Shackleton's legacy of leadership compared to principles we find in the Bible on life and leadership.
We have also started a final research project where student's are researching and presenting on different topics in livestock and landscaping.  The topics include: Animal Handling Facilities, Genetics, Grass-fed versus Grain-fed cattle, Shelter Belts, Mineral and Feed Supplements, Implanting, Artificial Insemination, and a Landscape Design for a house at SBA.
May 5th (Monday) we are planning a field trip to Dakota Lakes Research Farm which is operated by Dr. Dwayne Beck from SDSU who has been a pioneer of no-till farming.  I will plan on meeting West River students at the farm (17 miles east of Pierre on Highway 34) at 10:30 am, otherwise we will leave from school at 9:15 that morning.  Classes will be switched around that day so students should not miss much from their other classes.    
There will be FFA awards given out at Awards Night, so please join us in celebrating our year on May 8th!

State FFA Convention Highlights!

 SBA is the first private school in South Dakota history to start an FFA chapter.  This a picture of our senior leaders with the official charter membership!

 Livestock judging events at the Animal Science Arena at SDSU

Group picture with the charter membership

 A visit to the Dairy Bar at SDSU-a great way to end the convention!

We were very competitive in the horse judging and livestock judging competitions.  Our horse judging team finished 16th out of 59 schools and our livestock judging team finished 17th out of 66 schools.  Jana Hunt finished 19th out of more than 200 students individually in the horse judging competitions.  Congratulations!  (all the judging results can be found at judgingcard.com under "South Dakota State CDE's" from April 7)

The convention was a blast and I hope the students enjoyed it half as much as I did!  I'm proud of the students for their participation in the competitions, workshops and general sessions.  Being our first year, we did not win a lot of awards on stage, however, I'm confident that this group is laying the foundation for something special here at SBA.  The most important thing is that this group represented the Lord Jesus Christ well and for that they all accomplished far more than they could have in any competition!