St. Marys agriculture education instructors report to Elk Co. Farm Bureau

St. Marys Area High School agricultural education instructors Gage McCabe and Kyle Anstrom, along with five of the 97 students enrolled in the inaugural class, were the guests of the Elk County Farm Bureau at their annual banquet and meeting last month at Gunners in St. Marys.

Anstrom spoke to the group about thanking the Elk County Farm Bureau for the sponsorship to attend Penn State's Agriculture Institute last summer. He stated that it was a wonderful opportunity for him as a new agriculture education teacher to attend the six-day teacher professional development program for kindergarten through 12th-grade educators that are interested in adding agriculture education to their curriculum.

Anstrom explained that the participants live on campus and are immersed in agriculture by taking part in labs instructed by professors at the university, as well as by going on excursions to local family operated farms and several wineries. He believed that having the ability to build relationships with teachers throughout the state was most valuable, as was the ability to speak one-on-one with the President of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau Chris Hoffman, and Chris Davis, Executive Director of the Commission for Agriculture Education Excellence.

He talked about building a riparian buffer using materials in a hands-on lab experiment, and then the instructor took the students to one that was under construction near by. 

He defined a riparian buffer as a vegetation zone along a watercourse that has been seeded with native grasses and trees to maintain the watercourse as free of trash between cities and farms, and to stabilize against erosion.

Anstrom told how he applied what he learned at the Penn State Agriculture Institute to take his agriculture education students through the construction of a riparian buffer by borrowing a stream table from the Elk County Conservation District. He explained how his students printed out some 3D objects and did some CAD designing to construct items such as gabion baskets and various pipes and stream crossings.

Anstrom also reported going to a hemp-fed bison farm and being suitably dressed to tour Penn State's Poultry Farm, and getting to see the Center for Dairy of Excellence, including an arboretum tour, which he called wonderful.

He finished by remarking that he hopes to be able to go to Agriculture Institute 2.0 for repeat attendees next summer.

Other teacher Gage McCabe at the high school's Future Farmers of America (FFA) or agriculture education program, said the program is at wide-open throttle with all that is happening. "We have Kyle (Anstrom) teaching the small gas engines and a lot of the agricultural mechanics are nearby, and then I am teaching the plant and animal science part.".

We have the greenhouse being built and it's to be finished on Sept. 29. My students and I are just thrilled about that. We are well into a beef production unit, where students are learning everything about beef cattle and how they are raised and processed. Then we're going to go into dairy cattle, and sheep and goats.". We have five of our students that expressed a desire to come and join us here this evening, and we wanted you to know that we value all of your support.

He went on, "We have 97 members this year with six different classes in our agriculture education program. It has been a privilege to work with our students who are super excited about everything."

Then a student, Isaac Perlick, stood up and requested to be heard. He stated, "I'm the new Sentinel from the FFA program. I had to drop a couple of my classes to be able to take ag ed, and in my book, that's been the best decision I have ever made in my life. Well, not life, but in this junior year of school! And Mr. Anstrom and Mr. McCabe have just improved daily. In this program I see a brighter future, and it has even improved since the start of the year. There's more organization to everything. I do wish these two teachers the best of everything in their lives. I hope this program goes as far as possible.