Washington FFA reflects on year of state honors, coming FFA week celebrations

The Washington FFA chapter has been very busy this year going places, trying new things, and working to become our best. We elected the new FFA officer team at the annual FFA Banquet. The new officers are President Tess Berdo, Vice President Jade Sheetz, Secretary Taylor Moore, Treasurer Isabelle Peterson, Reporter Presley Hora, and Sentinel Blake Sheetz.

On Jan. 30 we attended the 39th annual Legislative Symposium, where we were able to meet with our local legislators, Sen. Dawn Driscoll and Rep. Heather Hora. We started the morning at the Embassy Suites where we listened to Lt. Gov. Adam Gregg, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, Iowa Farm Bureau Federation President Brent Johnson, and we also heard from High Yield Strategies’ Jake Swanson. While there, we had the opportunity to bring up and discuss any Ag-related issues we wanted to know and learn more about.

A big honor in FFA is to get your state degree. This takes a lot of work and dedication; we have three members getting their state degree this year! The members receiving this award are Jade Sheetz, Lauren Lukavsky, and Tess Berdo.

A few chapter members have been working every day for multiple weeks to compete at subdistricts. This year's subdistricts were on Monday Feb. 12. We hope that these members can show their talents at districts this year.

A huge highlight for every FFA member is FFA week. We have many fun things planned this year for the week, something new we are trying this year is a duck hunt. The duck hunt will take place at the high school, where students will be able to try and find the ducks when allowed, and get a prize once reporting the finding to the FFA advisor. The FFA week daily activities consist of Ag in the classroom, Teacher Breakfast, Middle School Ag Olympics, and Tractor Day. We start our FFA week with Ag in the classroom on Tuesday following no school on Monday. Ag in the classroom is a new thing we are trying this year: we will be going into third grade classrooms at Lincoln and St. James to teach the students about agriculture. Thursday, we have a day full of activities. These include the Teacher Breakfast and Middle School Ag Olympics.

The Teacher breakfast is our chance to thank our High School teachers for providing us with our education and for working with our members throughout the year as they participate in various competitions and conferences. The Middle School Ag Olympics is a favorite for the Middle Schoolers, this year we are adding something new to Ag Olympics. The Kindness Crews at the Middle school will be put in a bracket system and be going against each other in head-to-head Ag competitions to see who the best kindness crew will be.

Friday is the best day of the week in many members' opinion, this is Tractor Day. Everyone gets up early in the morning to bring their tractors into town, we get breakfast while we are in town at Evans Welding then we head to the High School. We then take the tractors to the local schools where we deliver the results from our coloring contest.

We are also doing something that we have never attempted before, a community supper at the Dallmeyer Hall at the Washington County Fairgrounds. Taco Tuesday will be a night full of fun, food and FFA, on Tuesday, April 2. The dinner will be a free-will donation with a suggested $5 per person. We will be serving tacos with many sides and desserts from 5-7:30 p.m. and would love to see you there to support our FFA chapter and get some great food.