End of the Year Part 2

 We celebrated our year in FFA with a banquet on May 2nd.  It was a blessing to be able to reflect back on all that God has done in the lives of our students!

 The students were able to pose for pictures around the fire-pit area we have been working on this spring.

 Our banquet was attended by 50 students, parents and guests.  Included in those guests were 2 families of whom we gave honorary membership to our chapter.  Brad Ufen is an SBA alumnus and has helped with our range judging and given us crushed rock for our fire-pit project.

 We also honored the family of the late Wayne Fawcett who was a strong supporter of our chapter.  The Fawcett family lives just over a mile away and are always willing to lend a hand with whatever we need.

Brent Thiel from Lindskov-Thiel Ranch was our speaker and he challenged all of us to pursue integrity in our business relationships as well as our relationship with God.  Below is a picture of our speaker addressing the students.

 A huge thanks to my wife for creating beautiful table decorations and to our neighbor for catering the delicious food!

 We are starting to get siblings in our chapter now as we have finished our 3rd year.  Below is a picture of a sister holding the gavel her brother made in his first year of FFA.  Thank you to all of our families for your support!

The End of the Year Part 1

 There are no excuses for late work in a teacher's mind so I won't even begin to try to explain why we have not updated the blog since State Convention.  However, it is the end of the school year which means it's time to work outside and wrap up projects!

 The students did a great job finishing the fire pit project.  It turned out beautiful and the track students tested it out a couple of nights ago.  It works great!

 Here is the Agri-business class which came up with the grant idea and helped with the project.

 Spring also means tree planting time.  The junior high and landscaping classes planted 160 seedlings around campus.  We plant as many trees as we can in 5 gallon buckets with the bottoms cut out of them (we are always running out of 5 gallon buckets).  This helps prevent against the trees getting run over by the lawn mower and helps contain moisture.

 Here is the junior high group after a successful day of planting!

 The junior high class also did a water infiltration lab where we tested the infiltration rate on 4 different types of land use areas-seasonally grazed pasture, no-till corn field, football field, and a native grassland area.

 Our landscaping class had a very hard final exam-we went to the golf course to learn about the maintenance of a golf course and then had to play a couple holes to test their skill.  We had a great time there and appreciate the Miller Country Club for hosting us.

Stay tuned for pictures from our banquet and other odds and ends that I missed here.  Thanks!

State Convention

 Here is the state convention crew from SBA this year-they were a great bunch and we are proud to have each one represent our chapter!

 Andrew Hoffman placed 2nd individually in the Ag Mechanics CDE.  He has worked hard all year and his efforts paid off at state!

 Our Safety Quiz Bowl team placed 3rd out of 16 teams and will be competing at the State Fair this coming fall on Saturday, September 5.

Our Ag Mechanics team did well and finished 9th out of over 50 teams.  They were impressed by the Precision Ag equipment that SDSU was showcasing and so we got a picture by one of their new Kubota units.

 Our young horse judging team was made up of a brother/sister/cousin combination.  They learned a lot and hopefully will continue to build on their progress next year.

 Our livestock judging team has been very competitive all year long.  We didn't do as well at state as we would have liked, however, we have beaten the top 2 teams at state in district competitions this year.  Next year!

 The first session is always the best time to get photos with fresh, smiling faces.

 We try and make a couple trips to the dairy bar while at SDSU to test the quality control of their ice cream.

 Representing SBA!

 Enjoying ice cream!

 While at convention, we had the opportunity to serve with Soles for Hope and make shoes that will be sent to children in Africa.

Fire Pit Project

 Our fire-pit project is moving along and the students have been working hard on the design and excavating of the project.

 We chose an octagonal shape for our fire-pit area and that was quite a geometrical challenge to layout.  With the help of our talented maintenance staff we got it done.

 The students did a lot of hand digging, however, we did use the skid steer to help in the excavating process.

 We painted our lines out before we started digging to give us direction.

Picture Update

 We have been competing in 4 different Career Development Events and our livestock judging team placed 2nd out of 16 teams at Miller on March 22nd.  We also had a Horse Judging team, Ag Mechanics team and one student doing Vet Science.

 After the CDE in Miller, we did a yard project in town.  The students work well together and make working fun!

Plant Project

Here are the links and the vocabulary terms for Thursday, April 14th.  Remember, you need to choose 4 ornamental plants and 2 outside flowers to research and create a presentation on.  We will narrow that down to 2 ornamentals and 1 flower for your project.
https://hort.purdue.edu/ext/senior/
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/mg/Gardennotes/121.html
http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/plantfinder/plantfindersearch.aspx

Definitions:
Horticulture
Ornamental Plants
Tree
Shrub
Herbaceous Plants

Hands-On STEM Video

The following is a well-done documentary of how practical and hands-on STEM learning can be for those in agricultural settings.  This family is friends with staff members here at SBA.
http://www.edutopia.org/video/learning-stem-through-agriculture-nebraska-farm