Many FFA members nationwide raise awareness about the importance of agriculture and leadership. The Powell-Shoshoni FFA celebrated National FFA Week February 22-28. The week was filled with fun to engage students in community service projects.

Not only was it a celebration of FFA, but new members stepped up with Greenhand Degrees. On Tuesday was the Greenhand Banquet, and the day after, at 7 a.m., Greenhand recipients slapped their green hand on the walls of the Agriculture barn.

“The best part of FFA week for me is the opportunities we have to be able to get together and have fun while supporting our agricultural community,” junior Kate Mainwaring said. 

FFA week is a great week for members to grow closer to one another by helping the community and showing the quality of Agriculture, along with thrilling dress-up days throughout the week. 

“A lot of planning went into making FFA week happen,” FFA advisor Mr. Benjamin Curdy said. “It started at our Officer Retreat back in August. At that time, we created committees for specific events. The FFA week committee met 4-5 times to hammer out the details and give assignments to members to complete. Last year, I sent a survey to students asking for agriculture-related dress-up days. This year, the committee looked over those suggestions and selected ones that they thought would work best.” 

The FFA members are consistently working throughout the year, planning practices, meetings, and activities to keep the organization thriving.

“Each year, we host an event every day of FFA week,” senior Hadley Cooper said. “This year, we added a community service project of cleaning up BLM land, which was super fun, but my favorite is the Chore Night. This is a fun teambuilding competition that Reita Clark and I won this year.” 

The dress-up days during FFA week included the following: Monday’s Dress like an Animal Day, Tuesday’s Dress as your Dream Career Day, Wednesday’s Dress like Mr. Curdy Day, Thursday’s Tractor Rivalry Day (bring a tractor to school, and Friday’s Blue and Yellow Day to represent FFA. 

“My favorite dress-up day was dressing like Mr. Curdy,” Mainwaring said. “I thought it was fun to see all of the similarities in how everyone dressed.”

Numerous students dressed up as Mr. Curdy; others could hardly tell the difference. Another fun day of the week was tractor day, and the winner for Tractor Rivalry Day was James Schafer. He brought his large, magnificent tractor to school on Thursday and got lots of fans.  

“This week leaves an impact on FFA by bringing awareness to the community members at the local, state, and national levels,” Cooper said. 

FFA is all about Agriculture, leadership skills, and connecting with others, whether that be with shared experiences or not. Practicing leadership and connecting with others now will pay off as these wonderful students get older and graduate from high school. 

“To me, FFA means much more than farming and animals,” Cooper said. “Although that is a very important part of it, there is much more to it, whether that be having livestock, building leadership skills, or having a sense of belonging. FFA has built many lifelong friendships and connections for me.”