By Jerry Couch

Last Thursday afternoon, the CVT visited Zach Addington’s agriculture class at Castlewood High School.  The agriculture program and the Future Farmers of America, once staples of the school, have been reinvigorated.  This fact was amply demonstrated by the enthusiasm of Zach’s students.

Unlike former days, the class is not “boys only.”  The girls are well-represented, too.  Also, not all the program’s participants live on farms.  Each student is preserving our farming heritage by learning fundamental life skills in “real time.”  They are part of an important hands-on program that demonstrates how our food makes its way from farm to table.

In addition to the afternoon agriculture class we visited, there is a morning class as well.  On the day we were at the school, the morning class had visited a livestock farm where they observed and participated in the vaccination of cattle.

Pictures are always more descriptive than words, so let’s look at the students’ projects.

Here are two residents of the school’s livestock barn.  The animals are healthy and happy because their student keepers take good care of them.

Here are the egg-producers mentioned above.  They do not always surrender their eggs without a peck or two.  The pygmy goat is receiving a snack from a student.