We Wouldn’t Be Here Without FFA

We wouldn’t have this farm if we weren’t together. And we wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for FFA. by Chad

Next week Jeana, Carston and I load up and head to Indianapolis for National FFA Convention. I’m going on behalf of Syngenta, Jeana’s chaperoning, and Carston is going as a member with his first blue corduroy jacket of his own. I’ve been thinking about this trip all week, and I keep landing in the same place – a classroom in Sumner, Washington, in 1995.

I can still picture it. The Ag Science room was in the back corner of the school, windows on two sides, those high tables built for two people, fish tanks along the wall, projects everywhere and kids running around before the bell. I was a senior – 190 pounds, skinny as a bean pole, strangler Wranglers – and FFA had been my pathway since the 8th grade. That room was my place.

Jeana was a freshman. I noticed her and another girl running around in the back of class, and I honestly can’t remember if we even talked. But her image stayed with me.

It would be years before our first date.

That whole year FFA kept putting us in the same places – showing animals at the fair, state convention in Pullman, day to day in Mr. Pile’s classroom. Proximity but not much interaction. We were in our own worlds. I’d started with sheep as a freshman, done my time with pigs, and worked my way up to showing beef my senior year. Our livestock judging team took 2nd in the state in 1996 – I was 11th as an individual and 5th in oral reasons, which I still bring up more than anyone wants me to.

Here’s something I’m not sure I’ve said out loud before. FFA was a safe place for me. I lived in 31 houses by the time I was 18, and that classroom and the dream of farming were the steady thing. Finding safe outlets like that was an incredible blessing, and I didn’t know it at the time.

FFA is literally the only reason I applied to WSU. I walked into the Ag classroom one day and all my friends were on the computers – turns out they were applying to WSU, and they showed me how. That’s it. That was the whole college decision.

Jeana got to WSU a few years later. By then she’d placed at FFA Nationals multiple times – top 3 in sales and in public speaking. I’d gotten top ten in parliamentary procedure, which is about as nerdy as it sounds. Years went by. Then one night on the river in Riggins, after a night by the fire, Jeana showed up. I found out she was single and asked her out right there – I was so excited I couldn’t help it.

She made me wait until morning. I’d had too many Coors Lights.

We’ve been inseparable since.

Without Mr. Pile and his wife’s support and inspiration, we would not have our farm. And every sheep out here is from his flock.

Fast forward. Last May I’m sitting in a Marriott lobby in Pullman at 5:09 in the morning, the family asleep upstairs, while Carston gets ready to walk across the stage at State convention for his AgriScience project – following in his mom’s footsteps, at State as a freshman. Our son knows more about soil at 15 than I did at 40.

Now it’s Nationals. He’s representing his bronze in AgriScience. He’s the chapter president as a sophomore. And the jacket is his.

It’s surreal. The whole thing is bringing back so many memories and reminding me how much of an impact FFA had on our lives. Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: we wouldn’t have this farm if we weren’t together. And we wouldn’t be together if it weren’t for FFA and an ag classroom in the back corner of a high school.

How’s it end? Or is this just the beginning?

As the door opens, we can’t wait to get pumped up at convention and learn tons to bring home to our Manson FFA chapter.