Granite Hills celebrates Future Farmers of America Week. To celebrate, a food fair will be held on Friday, February 22.

Future Farmers of America dominates with school activities this week
Sabrina Ziegler | 2/21/08 | News

Friday’s activities will include various contests, including roping, milk chugging, an egg and spoon race, and “haybucking.” This is a game in which teams of four compete in a timed race, transporting stacks of hay, according to club advisor Danell Daniels.

“Usually, in the past, we’ve done an activity every day but we figured that since ‘Halloween on the Hill’ was such a success, we would do something similar [as well as] have everything on one day,” said Daniels.

“We’ll have a lot of stuff going on Friday so we hope we’ll have a lot of people participating,” she said. The Granite Hills FFA will be receiving the help of Associative Student Body members to promote the week’s activities as well as encourage students to dress up on Friday, where the theme will be western.

Alex Guillen was FFA sentinel last year. “We did a roping contest and a pie eating contest. It was pretty successful. Our biggest money making thing is our GHS roping that we do,” he recalled. The club will host a roping event again, this year on May 10, which will help them to raise money, with the Porterville Fair around the corner.

The food fair will also contribute to the FFA fund. “I think it’s just a way for every club to earn money,” said Guillen. Other clubs will participate in this portion of fundraising as well.

Tyler Quilling is a member of the FFA organization at Porterville High School.

“We do everything from donkey basketball, to bingo, barbeques and [other] concessions. We do it all, fine and simple. Whatever there is to do in FFA, we do,” said Quilling.

A national tradition since 1928: FFA week is comprised of High Schools across America creating activities for their perspective student body to participate in.

“It’s just kind of to promote agriculture across America,” said …Daniels, FFA advisor for 8 years.

At the end of the week, Daniels will select two delegates from the club to send to a Spring Regional meeting at Frontier High School, amongst 200 to 300 other students. From that point, regional officers are nominated. Granite Hills has not yet had any students receive an office position, said Daniels.

Guillen said, being in the club, “there are a lot of opportunities. You can get a scholarship just from being in FFA.”

This week will serve to promote the foundation which began 80 years ago. The Granite Hills FFA will continue with activity up until the time of the Porterville Fair.