Farm Bureau Acquaintance Day

This past week on Tuesday, February 5, 12 students from the Red Bud FFA Chapter attended the Farm Bureau Acquaintance Day at the University of Carbondale. The students were Tyson Rieke, Matt Wiegard, Jeff Kern, Vance Schmidt, Dylan Falkenhein, Jack Stephan, Kayden Heinemann, Austin Grohmann, Makayla Whelan, Olivia Carle, Adrienne Valet, and Molly Ellner.

There were four stations at the event, with each teaching something different. One of the stations taught students about helping others and how easy it is to help someone who is in trouble. We bagged up food for a homeless food program called Gum Drops. Members were also instructed to write down things we have done within our chapter and things we want to do to help the community. The papers we wrote on were then given to our advisor to read and reflect on. The next station was a panel with farmers and agriculturists from the area. We were able to ask them questions about their jobs and issues of different things going on within the agriculture industry today. The third station was ran by the Illinois State Officer Team and the central idea was teamwork. They had an activity that split the team members into groups and we had to fit all of us into three sizes of squares. We had to use teamwork to get everybody in the square, but there was a catch: no one was allowed to talk. One of the outcomes was that we even had to put people on our shoulders to fit us all in the designated space. It was a great team building activity and we all learned a lot more about how important teamwork is. At the final station, two females from the Illinois Farm Bureau informed us about what agriculture is like right now throughout the state.

To finish the event, there was an online contest and the kids who won got some sweet prizes. To top it all off they fed us Subway, which I’m sure a lot of kids were looking forward to.