Another Unique SAE!

For this visit, I decided to visit another very active freshman member, Tony Royer.  Tony has become very active in just a short time and has even been awarded a spot on the 2018-2019 Selinsgrove FFA

officer team as the treasurer.  This seems very fitting as he is learning a lot about money management through his placement SAE at Dressler's Farm.

Tony, left, was just awarded Star

Greenhand Degree at the banquet.

Tony is only one of the high school students that is employed by Dressler's Farm which is owned by Selinsgrove FFA alum, Kevin Dressler.  Kevin's farm is mostly vegetable production where he sells the tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins, herbs and much more at local farmer's markets, vegetable auctions and at his own farm stand.  He also has many different small animals that he raises to sell privately or at the local livestock auction.  These include chickens (of all shapes and sizes), rabbits, quail, pheasant, guinea pigs, ducks and goats.  All of these aspects play a part in Tony's SAE. 

Tony has many responsibilities at Dressler's Farm which vary depending on what time of year it is.  During the winter months, there is no field work to be done so most of his job requires him to care for the animals and towards the end of winter start seedlings in the greenhouse.  As the weather warms up, there are more jobs to be done.  Tony helps to prepare the fields by making sure all rows are clear of plastic from the season prior and helps to keep the plants happy by transplanting them into bigger containers until they are ready to hit the soil.  Once the summer is in full swing, Tony works more to help pick the crops and package them for the farm stand.

Field clean up is a lot faster when you can put the plastic in the wagon! 

In AET, Tony keeps track of all the time that he puts in at work and records all of his hourly wages.  This is a great SAE for Tony to have as a freshman and this is an experience that he can continue as long as he is employed there.  This is also a great SAE that will help him to later earn degrees and proficiencies. 

Tony will have lots of work here in a few days when these all need transplanted!  

SAE Visit

At Selinsgrove, the Ag Foundations class is made up of primarily freshman but also has a few sophomores mixed in.  Part of their classwork is learning how to use AET for record keeping which means that everyone must have an SAE that they can add entries for.  I had already seen many of my upperclassman's SAE projects over the summer and talk with them about their goals of how to grow or expand that SAE. 

For this visit I wanted to focus on the student's in the Ag Foundations class and see what it looks like when you are just starting your SAE and beginning that record keeping process.  Now I myself have been through this start up phase of learning the lingo of what is an expense, what is non current capitol, etc. however, when I did record books it was the older versions that were in an excel document; not in AET.  So I wanted to learn my way through AET with one of the students who was just learning it all too.  

I picked to visit with Maddie Haupt who is indeed a freshman at Selinsgrove.  Maddie is new to the

Maddie, center, wants to put the jacket she just go to good use! 

FFA chapter however she has already hit the ground running and has become actively involved.  She even received her FFA jacket at the PA Farm Show in January and hopes to put it to very good use, very soon.  When Maddie was talking with Mrs. Fry about what she should do as her starter SAE, she couldn't think of anything but she knew that she wanted to become even more involved with the chapter and learn all about what the chapter does.  So Mrs. Fry and Maddie decided that her SAE would be completing the Selinsgrove FFA's chapter scrapbook for this year. 

Now this is a pretty unique SAE in my mind but when you think about it, this is a great SAE to start with.  It helps Maddie to record how many hours she is putting into the scrapbook, what type of expenses can be tied up in completing the book and of course helps her to sharpen her record keeping and organization skills.  This SAE falls under the Exploratory SAE category and is a project that Maddie will not be expanding on for next year.  However this works great for both Maddie and the chapter since there is no reporter this year on the officer team.

How many laptops can we use for one SAE visit?! 

The Selinsgrove FFA chapter decided last year that they would steer away from the giant scrapbooks that other chapters usually make.  They have moved their scrapbook to be done completely digitally.  Maddie upload pictures to the chapter's Snapfish account and adds them to digital page templates where she can add captions and digital stickers to embellish.  Once Maddie is finished with the book, she just hits print and in a few days, a package comes to the school.  Inside you would find a book that is reminiscent of a child's hardback book.  It is bright, colorful and has all of the pictures printed right in the book instead of glued to paper or pages in the giant heavy FFA scrapbooks.

Maddie works very hard to make 

sure that the pages are just perfect! 

Since all of Maddie's work on the scrapbook is done digitally and Selinsgrove is a one-to-one school, we were able to meet for her visit over lunch in the Ag room.  I have an hour long lunch where I was able to sit with Maddie and she showed me how she puts pictures in the book and how to add all the extras to the pages.  We also were able to look at her record book on AET at that time too since it too is digital.  We talked about how many hours she had logged so far and how she never though that it would take so many hours to completing this book.  

I actually really like the idea of having freshman or new students to the program start off their SAE journey with a smaller task that might take only a few weeks or months.  This is a great way for them to learn where to enter things in AET and just be able to click around and get comfortable with the system.  Now that being said, I think that this could have a downfall because depending on what these records are kept on, the student might not be able to apply these hours towards proficiencies or degrees later down the road.  

SAE are graded on two different levels at Selinsgrove.  For the beginners in the Ag Foundations class, Mrs. Fry makes them have 4 entries per month (1/week)  that they receive a grade for.  It does not have to be a long, elaborate post but they do need to say what they did/how much it cost/ etc for it to count.  If you are in your second year or more of SAE, you are enrolled in the SAE class that students receive credit for.  This class requires students to fill out the application for an SAE grant in the fall, the application for a proficiency in the spring and over the summer you get to have an SAE visit with either Mrs. Fry or Mr. Swineford.  

A Closer Look at SAE's

Supervised Agricultural Experience otherwise known as SAE is a vital part of agriculture education.  It serves as the opportunity where students are able to apply and showcase skills that they have learned both in the classroom and in FFA activities through a project of any type.  There is a way to turn almost anything you do into an SAE whether it be raising a livestock project for the fair, working at a local business, or even volunteering in your community.  There are endless opportunities to turn your students experiences and interests into an SAE. Through SAE, students are also able to discover what self-directed learning is.  They are able to take learning into their own hands and dig deeper into the things that interest them.  All of this being said, I was able to see some really interesting SAE while visiting some of the students of Selinsgrove High School.
I started my day off with Mrs. Fry by going to visit Kaitlin Shaffer.  Kaitlin is an incoming freshman

Free stall barn at
Kaitlin's Dairy Farm

to the Selinsgrove Ag Department and is just starting her SAE.  Thankfully her older sister has just graduated from the program and is helping her with small questions she has along the way. Kaitlin has two SAEs right now; swine finishing and on farm employment.  She is raising two market hogs for her local fair and has been keeping records of feed expenses, rate of gain, and once she shows them she will record how they placed and what they sold for. This is a very popular type of SAE with ag students.  In fact, most of my SAE's growing up were finishing projects that were exhibited at the fair. As I said before, Kaitlin also has an on farm employment SAE as well.  She lives and works on her family's dairy farm where they have robotic milkers.  She is able to log her hours and describe her duties on the farm in her records.  Since they have robotic milkers, none of her hours are dedicated to actually milking.  She spends most of her time during this project, helping with  feeding and keeping the milking facilities clean.  Being a dairy girl myself, I was very interested and curious about how things differ at a robotic farm versus traditional milk parlors. 

Jacob working on
the grill of his current
project. 

Next we went to visit Jacob Dock who serves as the FFA chapter's President.  His SAE was very interesting and was new to me.  Jacob does vehicle restoration as his SAE.  He has always had an interest in old cars and trucks and loved working on them in his free time.  So why not turn it into an SAE?  This was definitely new for me.  I knew that SAE's could be very unique but I never knew or thought about having a student have an SAE like this.  Jacob is currently working on two different vehicles.  One is completely tore apart in his garage as he is replacing the grill and various other parts on the truck.  The other is a project that he was working on and took for a test run.  Unfortunately, the test run didn't go very well so he is headed back to the drawing board to see what went wrong.  In his SAE, Jacob not only has to find vehicles to work on and then find parts to fix them but he also does a lot of fabrication.  On one of his finished projects, he replace the fenders and the bed of an old truck but he made it all on his own using the welding skills that he was able to learn in Mr. Swineford's classes at school.  Jacob was even a member of the 2nd place Ag Mechanics team at the Pennsylvania State FFA convention in June.  The team will be competing at the Big E in September.
Our last visit of the day was with Darrah Yerger.  Darrah also serves on the FFA

These are Darrah's Dutch Belted heifers
and her Belted Galloway bull calf. 

chapter's officer team as Secretary.  While driving to see Darrah, Mrs. Fry told me that Darrah had a little bit of everything at her place and I learned that she definitely does.  As we pulled up, I saw sheep, horses, chickens, beef cattle as well as produce fields and fruit orchards.  Darrah helps with all of the aspects of her families farm but her SAE's and focus is on the produce and fruit production as well as her small her of Dutch Belted cattle.  She has two heifers and one bull calf.  I actually learned from Darrah that she has Dutch Belted heifers which can be milked and are more like a dairy breed.  Her bull calf is a Belted Galloway which is the beef breed and get a lot more hair on them. Darrah also helps her dad with the produce and fruit production.  They grow tomatoes, green beans, peaches and apples.  Darrah helps her dad with planting, managing pests, harvesting and selling.  They are able to set up a produce stand at the Farmer's Market in Harrisburg and sell their fruits and veggies. 
Not only did Mrs. Fry just visit with her students and check to see how the SAE's were progressing but also on every visit she had the students pull up their record books and helped them with any questions or problems they were having.  We were able to show Kaitlin how to manage her breeding stock and where to enter the calves that were born.  Jacob had a few questions on how could he apply for a proficiency award and Darrah was curious where she entered experiences that related to her FFA office. 
I had a great day visiting with these Selinsgrove students and can't wait until I get to go on more visits.  I was able to see a variety of projects just in one day and I am curious to see what other unique SAE's are found within the program!