More than 600 elementary students flooded Pisgah High School’s farm earlier this month to get a firsthand look at agriculture and its multifaceted impact on the local community during the school’s FFA Farm Days.

Pisgah agriculture and horticulture students manned hands-on activity stations that included topics like paper making, growing beans, shearing sheep, and fitting cattle.

For many of the elementary students, FFA Farm Days was their first field trip since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normal school activities, like field trips.

In the past, Pisgah’s FFA Farm Days was just a one-day experience for kindergartners at Bethel, Meadowbrook, North Canton, and Clyde elementary schools; but this year, Pisgah extended it to a week of activities to include kindergarten, first, and second grade students.

Brandy Littrell, a first grade teacher at Clyde Elementary School, said she appreciated Pisgah opening up the event to older students since first and second graders did not get to participate during the pandemic.

“The kids have been looking forward to this field trip for weeks,” Littrell said. “Most of them don’t get to see farm animals up close like this.”

This is the eighth year that Pisgah’s animal science teacher Courtney Smith and horticulture teacher Joshua Justice have organized the event.

“For Pisgah, the benefit of FFA Farm Days is two-fold,” Smith said. “We are getting to educate our youngest students about agriculture’s impact on their daily lives, and we are recruiting students for our agriculture and horticulture programs at the high school.”

Smith said the field trip is such a positive and memorable experience for students, that they are eager to take agriculture and horticulture classes when they reach middle school and again in high school.

Although Haywood County is rural, the vast majority of students do not live on working farms.

“So many kids don’t know where their food comes from and don’t make the connection between the farm and their dinner plate,” Smith said. “They don’t necessarily see farm animals on a day-to-day basis.”

That kind of exposure is particularly important in teaching children why agriculture matters, Smith said.

Elementary students were not the only ones enjoying the day. Hosting each of the eight activity stations were several Pisgah high school students. The teens had a few laughs as they taught and interacted with the elementary-aged students.

At the chicken station, high school students Jillian and Autumn taught rotating classes about raising chicks and the egg-laying process while playing a game with Easter eggs.

“One kid asked me how many chicken nuggets we could get out of all the chicks,” Jillian said with a laugh. “They also loved it when one chick found a worm, and all the other chicks chased it around the pen.”

Pisgah horticulture and agriculture students visit the school’s farm, located a few minutes away from the school on Old River Road, several times a week. While there, the students tend to the animals and maintain the farm. Currently, the farm is home to beef cattle, several sheep and their lambs, pigs, goats, and chickens.

Submitted by:  Carrie Sutton, HCS Foundation