Last week we published our other special section in February, the FFA section.
As if writing a bridal guide for my first big project as news editor back in 2014 hadn't been enough, I had to turn around and write about FFA.
I was tied for most-indexed in the yearbook my senior year of high school, mostly because I was in almost every club. There were even some activities that people thought I was in but I wasn't, I just had so many friends in them I was basically an honorary member. But FFA seemed like an entirely different planet when I was in high school. That's unusual, because all the Odessa students I've interviewed have been involved in several of the organizations I was a part of. But, my class wasn't exactly typical on any front, so I've just come to accept it.
Elizabeth Fahrmeier with one of her bottle lambs.
It's been an interesting project over the last several years to learn about FFA, an organization that has set a lot of students in the area up for successful careers (I'm still kind of in awe of Ben Niendick's national award winning business, which I featured back in 2016). Of course, it hasn't come without stumbles; while interviewing Abby and Alli Bertz last year I was patiently explained that what they were talking about was a verb, to farrow pigs, not a noun, Pharaoh pigs.
This year we featured Elizabeth Fahrmeier, the Wellington-Napoleon chapter president. Of course I was probably too excited to see her animals, as she raises sheep (the lamb nibbled my finger and I was delighted). Like many of our top FFA students in the area each year, Elizabeth'll be heading to Mizzou next fall.
What I've really learned over the years of doing the FFA section is that despite being Odessa's most notorious city girl, I have more in common with our featured future farmers (or agribusiness execs, or agribusiness advertising designers — FFA is multifaceted) than I expected. I'm a fifth-generation journalist, just like they're several generations into farming, so I know what it's like to grow up in a career and follow a path your family has created. We all also love rural Missouri a whole lot.