Friday, January 09, 2009

The 2008-2009 Central City FFA Chapter is led by President: Kelsey Ferris, Vice-President: Phillip Johnson, Reporter: Emily Maresh, Secretary: Stephanie Nelson, Treasurer: Aaron Huston, Parliamentarian: Tiffany Reimers, Historian: Amanda Hefner; Sentinel: Daniel Schwarz, and Advisor Mr. Maresh. We have 50 active members in our chapter this year.

Our FFA chapter was very active this summer, starting off with COLT. We also had a 4th of July petting zoo, did baseball concessions for the Legion games, participated in the county fair, and picked up sticks.
With our chapter doing the Legion baseball concessions we raised around $2,500. We had four members show at our Merrick County Fair and they were Kelsey Ferris, Emily Maresh, Travis Maresh, and Isaac Jefferson, and the Central City FFA Chapter won the herdsman ship award.

Emily Maresh was named reserve champion senior swine showmanship and Isaac Jefferson was named champion intermediate swine showman and second overall showman.  Travis Maresh was named outstanding swine exhibitor for the 2008 Merrick County Fair.

We kicked off our school year activities with a hayrack ride, bonfire, and meeting. We then went and helped at a nearby vineyard harvesting the grapes.

Next was the State Fair with four members exhibiting. These members were Emily Maresh, Travis Maresh, Isaac Jefferson, and Keith Bankson. Emily, Travis, and Isaac all brought down pigs and Keith brought down some bean plants.

We than ventured down to the annual Husker Harvest Day’s farm show and we took 40 members. Members got to learn more about new technologies in agriculture and the newest and most improved equipment. At Husker Harvest Days members of our chapter helped at the health screening tent and afterwards helped clean up.

The most recent thing our FFA Chapter has been to is the Careers in Ag Day which was sponsored by Cornerstone Bank. There were 240 people that attended from 18 schools and there were 10 different sessions you could have attended while there.

The Central City FFA Chapter sent 18 students. Mike Johanns was the guest speaker and he talked to us about the future within agriculture. We learned more about agricultural related careers we can get into, where you can go to school for these careers, and what you do within these careers.

During the fall sports season we help with the football concessions. The next thing that is on our agenda is the FFA IMPACT Workshop in Hastings on October 13th.

We would like to thank our alumni for all of their help and support they have put into our FFA Chapter. We also would like to put out a big thanks to our advisor for all of the support, jokes, knowledge, and wisdom that he has given to us already this year.