North Harford’s Agriculture Program, being a unique feature of North Harford is something to celebrate. This year’s annual FFA week kicked off on Tuesday, February 21 with a faculty breakfast in the media center where pancakes and waffles cooked by FFA members for the NH staff.

On Wednesday, they had their general meeting where they discussed upcoming events and recruiting ideas. Thursday and Friday, FFA took the opportunity to display their animals; Sheep, Gracie the cow, and Burt the alpaca were out by the bus loop.

Also on Friday, the annual basket bingo took place along with the pie in the face contest. Throughout the week, all students had the opportunity to place their spare change in a milk jug piggy bank, each one with a different FFA member or teacher’s picture, determining who would win the contest. Lynne Thomas, sophomore was the lucky winner. “Somewhere over 200 people attended, it was the most successful bingo that we’ve had recently, so it was good a fundraiser to help us raise money for our chapter,” comments agriculture teacher, Erika Edwards.

Along with all of these events, FFA members participated in Maryland FFA’s spirit week where they could post pictures on Instagram corresponding to the theme of the day.                 

Even before the beginning of the week, FFA was working hard to promote agriculture in our community. They visited Brightview Assisted Living over the weekend before the week to help the residents with planters. They plan to go back in the spring to install a raised bed vegetable garden.

FFA’s involvement goes way beyond this one week as they attend many competitions and conventions to prove their agricultural knowledge. Every year they attend regional speaking, an event where members can perform various types of speeches. “I’m participating in agronomy which is like plants, it’s crops, weeds, like farming equipment, like hay judging, all that kind of stuff,” comments FFA president Emily Shiloh.

After regional competitions comes state competitions, then national competitions which is the highest level to compete at as a FFA member. Last summer, the convention was hosted in Oklahoma and some members were able to attend. “We had a team of members go for nursery landscape, which is like landscaping and knowing all of the plants in landscaping,” explains Shiloh.             

The North Harford FFA chapter has roughly 100 members, but nationwide, thousands of students are involved in the organization. “Our ultimate goal is to have more members but we hope that the members we have now can talk to their friends and say ‘hey this is what I love to do’ it’s and opportunity that everyone should explore,” says Shiloh.    

While membership is open to everyone, it is prefered that an agriculture class is taken as well. Shiloh advises anyone who wants to join to “talk to someone who’s already in FFA and see if it would be right for them.”

The agriculture teachers and members main goal by hosting the week was to educate non-ag students about agriculture and show their involvement at school. “I think a lot of students know that they go to a high school that has animals on their farm, but they don’t really realize the importance of the animals or why we have them there, so we did the educational videos on the announcements to kind of introduce our animals to the school,” explains agriculture teacher, Erika Edwards. She also hoped to, “show students what we do in the greenhouse and show them how the lettuce that we grow in the greenhouse is in the school lunches.”

Shiloh hopes that “students learned that FFA it isn’t just for farmers, it’s for everyone and that we really like to encourage leadership among our members and that we’re not just farmers, not all tractors and cows, we do other stuff.”

PC: Erika Edwards