Thursday, February 21, 2013

What FFA Meant to Me

Some of you may know that this week is National FFA Week.  It is hard to believe that it was nearly 10 years ago that I participated in our school’s FFA week activities, mainly wearing my blue and gold jacket and official dress proudly to school.  Since it is an organization near and dear to my heart and one I was involved in all through high school, and since I now find myself running an agri-business with my husband, I wanted to take a moment to share some of my positive experiences from FFA.



FFA was a family tradition for me.  My grandpa, uncle, and father were all members of FFA, all at Hagerstown High School in Hagerstown, Indiana.  It was a club I knew I always wanted to join.  But when I joined, I realized it was more than a club.  FFA was more than something I just joined to have fun or be with my friends, though I did both.  FFA truly is an organization that teaches its members to be responsible, hard-working leaders.  FFA taught me more than any other sport, club, or class I participated in during my teenage years.  I learned how to speak in public confidently, be a good leader, how to communicate with others, how to look at and judge the quality of soil, how to run a proper meeting following Robert’s Rules of Order.  I was able to meet new people, make many friends from many places, and make lasting bonds with other students from my school that I would not have ever spoken to otherwise.   Some of my fondest memories from school are from my many FFA contests, trips, and long hours of practice in the Ag room.

Today I find myself and my husband running a small goat dairy and a soap business—two things that I did not learn in FFA.  But I find myself using the skills I developed through FFA as we run our business from something as big as record-keeping to something as simple as having confidence to talk to a stranger about our products at a craft show.  I remember our Ag teacher constantly telling us that agriculture (and FFA) was more than farming, and now I know for a fact that while I joined FFA because I was a farmer’s daughter, the things I learned through FFA have impacted much more than fostering my love of the farm.


My sister and I in our FFA official dress in high school

Lastly, I want to share with you a short essay I wrote about a year ago that expresses exactly how much FFA means to me.

My Father’s Jacket
That blue and gold jacket hung in the back of my parent’s closet.  It had my father’s name and the word “President” stitched on it, and a gold chain hung from the pocket.  After hearing Dad’s fond memories of FFA, I couldn’t wait to have a jacket of my own.  I came from a close-knit farming family, where FFA was tradition.  My dad and his brother had both been the president of the Hagerstown chapter, as was my grandfather in 1941.  When I joined FFA, it wasn’t just to join another club—it was because I lived and loved the farming life.  “For I know the joys and discomforts of agricultural life and hold an inborn fondness for those associations which…I cannot deny.”  So the FFA creed stated, and so we lived. 
When I became an FFA member, instead of buying a new jacket, I wore my dad’s.  For four years, I wore it with pride.  I put it on with care before parliamentary procedure contests, got it wrinkled during sessions at the state convention, wore it to school during FFA week, and stood beside my sister and her matching jacket at district contests.  My crowning achievement was when, in my father’s jacket, I was handed the gavel and became the president of the Hagerstown chapter, carrying on the family tradition started sixty years before.  When I wore that jacket, it was more than just my official dress.  It connected me to my family’s farming heritage, to the tradition of leadership in my family, to my dad.  I never stood up straighter, walked taller, or spoke more confidently than when I wore that blue jacket.
At the end of my senior year in high school, I wore my jacket for the very last time as I handed the gavel over to my chapter’s next president.  I thought my life was over.  I may have left FFA behind, but not the lessons I learned and the memories I made. And dad’s blue and gold jacket, an emblem of all FFA taught me, now hangs in the back of my closet.