Month number two for our team is in the books and boy what a month it has been. In last month’s blog post, your 2021-2022 State President Isabel D’Acquisto wrote about how our number one goal this year as we serve you is to ignite a spark of passion inside new FFA members and re-ignite that passion for FFA in current members that may have been lost over the course of the pandemic. Over the past month our passion for that goal has been strengthened, and we are incredibly eager to get out and execute it!

This month we had the honor of attending Oregon Ag Fest in Canby, and while the event looked vastly different by being a drive through rather than a traditional festival, the turnout and results were still awesome! In our time at Ag Fest we handed out goody bags, greeted and directed people as they drove through, and most importantly got people hyped about Oregon Agriculture. Whether it was receiving noble fir trees to plant at home, learning about pieces of farm equipment, enjoying the best ice cream in the state from Oregon Dairy Wives, or simply learning fun facts about agriculture, people were stoked. As someone who has grown up in agriculture for literally my entire life, I can say that it is a very positive and quite frankly unique feeling to see so many take interest and seek out information in our industry, especially those who were doing it for the first time and had very little previous experience with ag. An even more positive feeling was when parents would ask about the blue jackets and show interest in enrolling their children in ag classes. On multiple occasions we would hear, “How do we get our kids into FFA?,” or, “How do our kids become FFA members?” It shows that there is a bright future for FFA ahead, and confirms that our goal of igniting passion for FFA in new members will be a reality.

To add some skills to our toolboxes we attended Basecamp training in Baker City. At Basecamp training we did a lot of things including making Tik Toks on a trampoline, playing Twister, playing Just Dance, going on hour long missions trying to buy monopoly in Baker City, and answering numerous Instagram Q &As, but what really mattered was the time we spent learning how to best serve you, Oregon FFA. The theme that stuck in our heads throughout training was “This is about us now, so it can be about them later.” While we were learning how to best serve our roles, we had this theme in our head and we were doing our best to absorb as much knowledge as possible, all so that we can do our best to serve you guys.

All of this ties back into our original goal: Igniting a passion inside of new FFA members, and reigniting that passion in current members. At Ag Fest we saw how that goal can shape out in the future while beginning to execute it, and at Basecamp we learned skills that will help us along the way.

Oregon FFA, prepare for ignition!

With Gratitude,

Justin Sharp

2021-2022 Oregon FFA State Vice President