SAE Visit #2 - Entrepreneurship

The Wellsboro Agriscience department has opened my eyes to a whole world of agricultural education. I had the opportunity to visit another successful student and his SAE project. One thing I love about Wellsboro - you can stop at the local feed store on the way to an SAE visit and end up "visiting" 3 students at their SAE project. Such a fun trip to basically visit 4 SAE projects in one day whether you mean to or not!

Back to the SAE visit on purpose - tonight we visited an active FFA member who plans on showing animals at the fair. With how active this student is, there's no limit to what he takes on. He's had experience with pigs and this year decided to try his luck with some beef animals. His SAE would be considered an entrepreneurship (there are 4 total types - research, exploratory, and placement are the others) since he has purchased these animals to show at the fair. He is putting in the time to prepare these animals for fair and feeding/caring for them throughout this process. At the end of this project he would ideally make money from his project when he sells his animals at the fair.

It is great seeing the different projects students get involved in and how they use their resources. This student doesn't live on a farm so uses family properties to keep his animals for the most part. The steer he's using for his project are actually staying inside a dairy farm that his grandfather runs. It was such an experience to walk down the center aisle looking at all the dairy cows and all of a sudden see some giant beef animals at the end.

We asked various questions including his goals, improvements, and what he still needs to work on regarding this project. His mother was also there for the visit so sometimes she shared the information and pushed him to look deeper at his tasks. He sometimes runs into issues with getting to this barn to work with the animals so realizes he needs to start coming more regularly. I love seeing how students can develop and evaluate their goals! I hope to see him with his animals at the Tioga County Fair in the summer!