The First Two SAE Visits

August 20, 2015

Today was a very fun filled day at Derry FFA!

It started off with discussing classes and class units that I will need to prepare myself for this coming January 

 

2016. After working on that for about two hours (got into quite the discussion about lesson ideas), observing the students who came in to help for the day was a must! Officers Mia and Jessica came by to work on their floral arrangements for the Westmoreland Fair. As a student coming from no plant science in my background, I learned a lot about what oasis is and how to use it in floral design.

We then got a shipment of poinsettias in, so we took advantage of the time and planted all of the bulbs. It took approximately thirty minutes to get all of the flowers bedded with five people manning the greenhouse. Let me tell you, it was a LOT of bulbs! Although, it was nice actually getting dirt under my nails and learning the ropes of what goes on in the greenhouse.

Once those were complete, we called a few students up to see who was available for an SAE project visit. Found out that students do not like to answer their phone, and Mr. Campbell received a text message from two girls saying that they were going to be around for us to be able to visit.

The first girl we went to visit is an upcoming sophomore named Katie. She has a garden that she tends to for a friend of her mother's, and she cans the vegetables from them. She brought a whole box full of canned pickles, tomatoes and peppers along for us to view and explained to us that she has been canning with her mother for a few years now.

Katie actually purchased her peppers from the Derry Flower Shop, and she was amazed that they grew so well.  She has everything from watermelon to squash to peppers to asparagus to tomatoes and more, and they seemed to be free of weeds and diseases.

As soon as we stepped foot in the garden, mother nature decided to let the rain come on pounding down, but no worries, a little liquid sunshine never stopped an ag teacher from doing an SAE visit.


Along with her garden, Katie also has a horse. Blue is a registered American Quarter Horse that she purchased a little over two years ago.

Katie explained that Blue suffered from a stifle injury just before she got him and he has had some trouble with it

since. She has been restricted to minimal riding work with Blue because of his injury, but you can tell that the horse is well cared for. The barn was very well tended and the gelding was in very good health condition.

Katie is actually a tuition student at Derry High School, so it was an interesting experience going about a half hour away from the school to find a students house. 

It was nice being able to see the variety in Katie's projects and getting to know one of the students who I will be teaching the the Large Animal Science class this coming spring. 

The second SAE visit was to a girls house name Emiley. Emiley is an upcoming sophomore at Derry and she has an Exploratory Equine Science project.

Emiley recently rescued an OTTB (Off the Track Thoroughbred) and has been working hard on improving his health and body condition while keeping him fit. She also has a dark bay mare who used to be used in the show jumping circuit, but has recently injured herself so she has been working on getting the mare sound to ride her again. 

Emiley competes extensively in the hunt seat ring, and she even competed for Oak Run Stable. We even discussed her competing in the Horse Judging CDE at State Days next June, and that seemed to spark a bit of an interest from her.

She was unable to catch her horses in the field, but we were able to see them from the distance (so no photos of those bay beauties); however we were able to see her ribbon collection from summer competitions, and how her new barn was set up

Overall, I had a great experience with completing my first two SAE visits. I cannot wait to go on them someday for my own students as the Ag Educator.