This weekend the community of Taft and the surrounding communities are invited to the first Taft-FFA Ag Heritage Day.
This event will take place in front of the Historic Blackland Museum.
The goal for the Taft FFA chapter is to find a better way to get involved with their community.
Taft High School’s Future Farmers of America chapter, which first began in 1932, was cut after 74 years. After a seven year absence, The Taft High School FFA program was rechartered, and since then, the chapter has not slowed down.
“We have tried to grow our diversity. We have grown our community service, and our student organization has been growing ever since,” said Ag Science Teacher/FFA Advisor Cheryl Handy.
When this FFA program started back up in 2013, only two students were showing animals in local livestock events…now the class of 114 members are not only showing, they are now creating their own events.
“We are having a Taft Ag Heritage Day this weekend on Saturday to represent the agriculture community here in Taft and to really advocate for agriculture, ” said FFA President Jerry Sanchez.
“We are going to be blocking off Gregory Street, which is right by the Blackland Museum. We are going to have a big interactive trailer with Farm Bureau where you can learn where all your food comes from. We will also be giving tours of the Blackland Museum and our local pickle factory and that way they can learn just what we are about,” said Handy.
This event is to help celebrate the Taft community and teach them and others about agriculture.
“We want to bring people to our community, and we want to show them what Taft is all about and of course, FFA’s motto. We want to show them about agriculture, and we want to show them what we have been doing,” said Handy.
This is also another way to reach out to future FFA members.
“It is our goal to reach out to the younger generation to show and to do certain events, speaking events, and leadership events so they can have those job skills they need in real life, real world,” said FFA student Nathan Ramirez.
The Taft Ag Heritage Day will be held Saturday, May 4, from 9am-12pm at 301 Green Ave, Taft, TX 78390.
