It's Fair week in Escambia County! Actually our Fair is 10 days long, no one can pack this much fun into just one week! Today was Fair set up day. The FFA kids from our school always put a lot of hard work into their booth. FFA, for those of you city folk, is Future Farmers of America. The name changed to something more politically correct in the 90's, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was changed to. It was FFA when I was a kid, and it will always be FFA to me.
Future Farmers of America teaches the youth of our country about the agriculture and farming vocations. It's not just about farming. There's lots of science to it.
Think about it, everything we eat, and most of the things we use had a start in agriculture. In Florida, the first agricultural item people think we grow is oranges. WE don't even grow oranges in our county!!!! Not commercially anyway. Escambia county is known for peanuts, cotton, sorghum and grains.
I was recruited to help because my friend, Melissa, the FFA advisor, has been having back trouble this week. I was supposed to help the kids set up, and Melissa was supposed to sit back, supervise and direct the show. HA! She is so stubborn, we couldn't stop her. She even got up on the ladder. I admire Melissa, she is a can do girl. But she needs to rest that back! Fair week is just beginning! I ended up cutting out all the labels you see, while Melissa & kids labeled everything agricultural. That's one of the rules! The kids even remembered to label the bat & ball, ashwood and cowhide, because it is commercially produced agriculture!
They did an awesome powerpoint presentation on agriculture and featured Commissioner Bronson, our Florida state Agriculture Commisioner. He talked about his start in ag, and how it took him all the way through the legislature and to the Commisioner position. The kids teased that we would all have it memorized by the end of the day, and someday we would need to know something on that presentation for the million dollar question. The powerpoint will play continuously throughout the fair. It also has a part that the background music is the song, "Amarillo Sky" I love that song! It is a country song but I don't know who sings it.
Finally our time was up and we had two minutes to get out of the building. The kids, Melissa, that's her on the end in blue, and Ms. Vail, our Vet teacher, on the other end, posed for a quick and blurry pic. We didn't care, we were so tired and ready to go. And at 4 p.m. after two long days of booth building, we did!
It was a long, hot, humid day, but it brought back many of my fair memories from 10 years in 4H. I hope the kids do well, we have always brought home blue for our display ever since we started 4 years ago.
Good Luck kids! Keep up the winning tradition for WFHS!
:J
