"Are they growing any?" Chad Burkett asked senior Shelby Calico about her small flock of chickens, among which were Cochins she plans to enter in the fair. "Do you let them out in the daytime? Do you have any trouble with chicken hawks? Have you wormed them? You will need to do that before the fair."
Burkett -- along with Mitch Wright and Justin Rice -- spent Monday morning driving around in the rural areas east of Springdale. The men are agriculture teachers at Springdale High School, and they check students' projects for the Washington County Fair numerous times over the summer. State education standards require every agriculture student to complete a "Supervised Agricultural Experience" -- a project out of the classroom, with the student logging online the hours worked.
"The 'supervised' means parents and ag teachers," Wright explained.
The big, white, fluffy chickens look the same even to Calico, she admitted.
"What color are their earlobes?" Wright asked, using the moment to teach. "That tells what color their eggs will be. Those with red earlobes will have brown eggs. Those with white earlobes will have white eggs. If they have colored earlobes, their eggs will be colored" -- and the colors can even be blue or pink.
Calico's sister hatched these chickens from eggs in an incubator and gave them to Calico.
"My last year (of high school), I thought it would be fun just to enter chickens in the fair," Calico said. "But it's nice to have the little birds. Raising them from babies, I feel they are mine."
"You're babying them, aren't you?" Burkett asked, when he found a bag of treats in the bin with the chicken feed. He checked the protein content and approved.
Burkett then sent Calico into her house, and she returned with pristine jars of pickles, peach jam and salsa she canned this summer. The teachers quizzed her about water baths, head space and even the brand of jars.
"Canning is fun," Calico said. "Well, it's not fun peeling the peaches, with the juice running down your arms. But it's an interesting job, and when the lid pops, it's satisfying to know you did it right."
The teachers moved on to stock tanks used as flower beds, with a few watermelons hiding underneath the foliage. They showed Calico the brown tendrils that meant the watermelons are ready for picking and discussed different ways she could cut flowers to enter in the fair.
"Anything you enter, you earn a minimum of $1," Burkett said. "You might as well get $50 bucks. Put in as many entries as possible."
"We want participation," Wright noted.
The face of agriculture students has changed in Springdale. Many students live in town rather than in rural areas. Many grow up in low-income households. Called "nontraditional," these student still can participate in the fair in categories such as canning and cooking, art and photography, horticulture and floraculture, Wright said. Springdale High School's agriculture academy enters its second year when school starts in August. Students choose from a variety of classes, including agricultural mechanics, welding, agricultural power, agricultural electricity, agriculture systems, food science, introduction to horticulture, greenhouse management, floraculture, animal science, biological animal science, poultry science, equine science and beef science, Burkett listed.
"We try to gauge what people in the community want," he said.
NAN Our Town on 08/06/2015