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Fair Lets Students Put Lessons In Life

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By MEGAN HUSSEY

Tribune correspondent

Published: February 8, 2009

ZEPHYRHILLS - When it's FFA students running the concession stand at the county fair, you can bet they didn't just make the food they're selling.

Chances are, they made the store, too - at least, if they're Rob Brown's students.

In about a week and a half, FFA students from Zephyrhills High School transformed a pile of recycled cedar into a 10-by-8-foot building with dutch doors, flooring, a tin roof and an order window - the Nut Hut.

The students are also making signs and promotional materials to advertise the boiled peanuts and roasted corn they plan to sell at this month's Pasco County Fair.

"On the sign we'll have peanuts in a hot tub with salt instead of bath salts and a cooker underneath," said senior Emily Brown, who is credited with designing the Nut Hut and doing much of the sawing and measuring for its foundation.

"The corn will be shown lying out in the sun, covered in butter."

The cedar used to make the Nut Hut was taken from old telephone polls provided by a Progress Energy subcontractor and prepared with the help of Wilbur Dew at the Pioneer Florida Museum.

The effort that went into building the Nut Hut reflects the overall mission of the school's FFA chapter, which includes about 70 students.

"The main message I want to get out there is that we don't just raise farmers in FFA," said Brown, the school's FFA adviser and agriculture teacher. "With the skills they learn here, they can go into veterinary science, sales, construction, marketing - whatever they want."

Students say the skills they learn here can help them turn their interests into careers.

"I've always loved animals, and I knew that through FFA I could adapt my love for animals into something more constructive, like showing animals for scholarship money," said Ashley Stevens, 18, who has been involved with FFA for seven years. "With these scholarships I can study to become an RN, a job that will give me the money to buy animals."

The agriculture classes teach students everything from recordkeeping to animal sales, agriculture sales to agricultural science.

"Every student learns how to use every farm tool in these classes," said 18-year-old Robert Welch, a senior.

The students put what they learn into action at a 30-acre farm blocks from Zephyrhills High. The school district owns the farm, which also gets used by students from R.B. Stewart Middle and West Zephyrhills Elementary.

Zephyrhills High students have been building animal pens and barn buildings, as well as caring for and learning how to show steers, horses, sheep, pigs and even llamas.

In addition to running the Nut Hut and showing animals at the fair, the FFA students will be driving two horse-drawn carriages, one of which they helped restore.

"I'm very proud of the work these students do," said Tim Urban, the school's assistant principal. "They're transferring learning into real life."

Echoing a philosophy students must hear quite often, Brown said it's important for students to put what they learn in his class into practice.

"Not all learning is designed to be done in windowless classrooms," he said.

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