FFA leads effort to restore barn

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February 9, 2010

Larry Penkava The Randolph Guide Tue Feb 09, 2010, 01:16 PM EST

CLIMAX — Providence Grove High School will be ready when the cows come home, thanks to the FFA and Campbell’s Soups.

The school’s FFA and FFA alumni spearheaded an effort to restore the old barn on campus. Led by Amy Kidd, agriculture science teacher and FFA sponsor, the school entered a campaign by Campbell’s called “Help Grow Your Soup.”

Vying with 10 other nominated barns, Providence Grove led online balloting with 92,902 votes out of about 350,000 cast. The top five barns in balloting will be restored.

Kidd said she applied with the campaign last spring when the new FFA alumni group was chartered. State officers at the chartering ceremony told Kidd about the campaign.

Providence Grove was notified that its barn was among 10 to be voted on, with the voting between Oct. 1 and Jan. 5. Voters could cast one ballot per computer per day during that period.

Kidd was notified on Jan. 6 that Providence Grove was one of the winners and that work, which will include painting the barn, doing minor repairs and landscaping, will take place soon. She said the barn will be painted red with white trim.

The barn, part of the 128-acre Cheek Farm that the Randolph County Board of Education purchased in 2006 for the new high school, needs renovations before it can be used for animal science classes, Kidd said. Once the work is complete, the barn will hold goats, bottle-fed calves, a minihorse, rabbits and guinea pigs.

“We desperately need the hands-on teaching” that the barn and animals will allow,” said Kidd. “It’s for the students.”

Kidd said the barn was built by the Cheek family with help by neighbors, and for years was a symbol of the community. It was originally a cattle barn but later was converted for horses, she said.

Fencing will be put up to hold the animals and for security. The large loft will be used for storing hay.

With 150 FFA members and students in several animal science classes, the barn is coming online none too soon for Providence Grove. Lexy Labrador, a senior and FFA historian, said she’d just like to “have animals before I graduate. We helped get the barn project out there, and last year we did a lot of in-the-barn work preparing for animals.”

Emily Brown, a junior and FFA parliamentarian, said students have helped get the fence posts up. “It’ll definitely help with animal science classes,” she said of the barn. “Now, we’re just sitting and taking notes. There’s no hands-on stuff.”

Brown said her older sister was in the program and she became interested through her. “I thought it might be an interesting class to learn more about animals. I love it. I have learned so much about cows and horses.”

Labrador said she’s always been interested in animals. “I wanted to be a vet,” she said, but has turned her focus more toward the environment. “I hope to do conservation, repopulate endangered animals.”

Ethan Pierce, a senior and vice president of FFA, said he began with agriculture science and it was a “fun class. We got to meet different people on farms” who raised goats, llamas and other animals. “It was interesting to see the diversity,” he said.

Pierce said he spent his first two years at Eastern Randolph, which has a working barn. “I knew what it was like to experience a barn,” he said. “I want other students to have that.”

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