Trinity High School’s Future Farmers of America club continues to grow
Tristan McDougan, left, and Shyanna Boone demonstrate how to massage plant roots as they transplant peppers to bigger planters.
Jessica Cunningham, left, and Lindsey Haney prune flowers for boutonnieres.
Andrew Hobgood shows off his herb plants in the Trinity High School community greenhouse.
Bacon-wrapped, sausage-stuffed jalapenos and stuffing-topped mushrooms feature ingredients gathered from the community greenhouse and farm sites partly managed by Assistant Superintendent Don Snoke in West Middletown.
Allana McCoy stands with her just-adopted 2-year-old rabbit, Kevin (a female), named in honor of the animated movie”Up.”
The membership of the Future Farmers of America club at Trinity High School has grown as dramatically as the plants in the district’s community greenhouse.
In just a year, the chapter increased from 22 to 82 students. Club members were showing school board members and state legislators Thursday some of the most tangible and literal fruits of their efforts: food produced from ingredients grown in the greenhouse and at a West Middletown farm partly managed by Assistant Superintendent Don Snoke. And with more members, there will be more food.
“We planted nine thousand pumpkins last year in West Middletown. This year, we’re going to plant an acre of green beans and an acre of potatoes. There will be tons upon tons of each crop, and a lot of that will go to the City Mission,” Snoke said.
The food on display included stuffed jalapeños and mushrooms and spinach-artichoke wheels. Some of the flavor of future dishes could come from a multitude of herbs FFA member Andrew Hobgood is caring for in one corner of the greenhouse behind the high school.
“Basil, thyme, sage, mint – it’s all here,” Hobgood said as he rattled off a traditional Italian recipe for “dessert tomatoes” that uses basil as its central flavor, which he plans to make in the future.
Other students were snipping and pruning flowers for prom boutonnières, and another student was happily rabbit-sitting her recently adopted pet, Kevin, a 2-year-old female bunny she took off teacher Robin Durila’s hands as she stopped showing her at fairs.
State Rep. Brandon Neuman, D-North Strabane, and state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Carroll Township, lauded the students for keeping the spirit of innovation and hard work alive.
“From the greenhouse to drones, to robots, these are the vocational and agricultural skills you’ll need to take into the global job market,” Neuman said.
“We need people interested in the technology and future of farming. It’s symbiotic. It’s not just planting things in the ground. It’s designing hardy crops and new methods of harvest that can sustain us for decades into the future,” Bartolotta said.
A lot of students – like Hobgood – are having their first agricultural experiences through FFA. For others, it’s reinforcing lessons learned.
“I live on a farm. So I came knowing a lot, but FFA has expanded my knowledge and passion and ability to care for livestock, to ensure a good harvest,” said FFA member Tristan McDougan, “and this is a starting place for a lot of veterinarians, auctioneers and bioengineers.”
Snoke said the program’s ongoing success and expansion wouldn’t be possible without past awards from the Local Share Account – most recently being awarded $42,000 in 2015 – and donations from the public. Trinity assistant principal Carol Lee said the vocational agricultural showcase was sponsored in part by the Remake Learning Days learning network.