According to Ms. Erika Edwards, “the North Harford FFA chapter from Pylesville, MD will send members to indianapolis as they vie for national honors in the area of nursery/landscape.” 

     Our team of future farmers collect themselves to compete in the nursery section of the 92nd National FFA convention. 

     The chapter has been doing multiple fundraisers to raise money for the long trip to Indianapolis including selling t-shirts, and a dunking booth at the homecoming  game. According to Edwards, most of the FFA officers have been selected to go and four members have been chosen for competing in the nursery/landscape field including juniors Nicole DeAtley, Megan Thomas, Shanyn Wolfe, and senior Kaylin Bordenski. 

    Edwards said that during nationals, a lot of things go on; first the chapter travels by plane ride  to Indianapolis, Indiana and settles down at a reserved hotel. Next, the members gather for opening session which was presented by Bob Goff, author of bestselling book Love Does , and that night they watch an Old Dominion concert to jam out. 

     Other events also include the national FFA officer team who will give their retiring address and the new officers will be chosen, and a “Brett Young concert, which our chapter is excited about” according to DeAtley

     Sophomore Teagan Flaherty has been looking forward to this trip for a long time and mentioned that “it’s a really big trip with almost 700,000 members going.” Flaherty also says she is super pumped about the Brett Young concert and to “meet new people and do fun things.” Flaherty thinks “it’s cool to see the national officers and people from other states cause usually you only see these people through social media.” 

      Over 10,000 members across the United States attend indianapolis to compete and DeAtley, who competed in the nursery section, is siked about placing 23rd out of 52 teams. When competing, DeAtley and the other members had to take written assessments on plants, tools, pests, and diseases. “Competitors also take part in practicums and work together as a team to calculate landscaping blueprints.”

      DeAtley, who has never been on the trip before, explains how she was “excited to compete with [her] friends and test [her] knowledge of nursery landscaping.” DeAtley also mentions she is taking part of the “fun” student workshops that take place to help students learn with a little twist. 

     Some of the workshops include “Just Dance Dilemma Solver” where students play Just Dance well they have meetings and discuss issues they need to solve, and “Discover YOUR World” in which students “will discover who they ARE and who they want to be” according to the official FFA national convention 2019 site.