This year, the National FFA Week ran from February 23 to March 1, 2015. Even though it was one week later than usual, it didn’t deter the Jacksonville FFA week from fulfilling the 2014-2015 theme: “Go All Out!”
Bright and early at seven in the morning, FFA members ventured out in the snow on Saturday, February 21 to meet up at Jacksonville High School. They helped plow and shovel out the parking lot before decorating the high school’s foyer and settling down to enjoy Casey’s doughnuts with a cup of hot coffee.
Come Monday, the excited FFA members dressed up in hunter’s camouflage. Some members, like Billy Browning, went all out and decided to dress entirely in camo.
The next day was the day of the petting zoos. Members were selected to bring in animals from their farms and stay in the ag shop during the school day till around 4:30 p.m. Early in the day, daycares from as far as Springfield traveled to Jacksonville High School to learn about farm animals before receiving crayons and a farm-themed coloring book to keep them occupied on the bus ride home. At noon, the FFA members took a break and enjoyed Little Caesar’s pizza and a cold, refreshing soda before getting back to work and attending to the multiple Jacksonville High School advisory classes that came to visit the ag shop. Afterwards, they met more small children and assisted the kids in doing their favorite part: feeding the goats or holding the baby bunnies. At the end of the day, FFA members began to clean up the shop and load up animals before going home and taking a much-needed nap. That same day, Mandy Jackson and Eric Wilson were crowned FFA Sweetheart and Beau, respectively.
Wednesday night, chapter members, their parents, the FFA Alumni and even a reporter from the Jacksonville Journal Courier joined together for the Agriculture Olympics. The events included a marshmallow mouth-stuffing contest, an oreo cookie face, tug of war, egg toss, a pie eating contest, a bale toss and the two favorites: the egg drop and the sheep nipple derby. In the former, Dalton Bartz explains it best: “Somebody stands on top of a ladder, and I lay on the floor. The person on the ladder breaks the egg and tries to land it in your mouth. In my case, it landed in my mouth. And I swallowed it for extra points!” Chase Tomhave, another freshman, won the sheep nipple derby. “All you do is put a rubber sheep nipple on the bottle of soda. It seems super simple until you try it! You feel like you’ve drank half the bottle, so you look, and you didn’t even make a dent.”
At 9 p.m. Friday, the FFA members finished off a successful FFA Week with bowling. The members met up and played three games and ate Leo’s Pizza, paid for by the Jacksonville FFA Alumni. “That was my favorite part,” Becky Colwell, a junior and the chapter secretary said, “Even if I ended the last game with a score of 19.”
While FFA may not mean much to everyone else, it means the world to the FFA members. They put their heart and soul into celebrating FFA and love their FFA “family” in a special connection no other national organization can even touch.