By STEPHANIE McFEETERS
@mcfeeters
Daily Hampshire Gazette
NORTHAMPTON – Tucked away in a red barn at the back of the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School campus, there’s a different kind of learning going on. Students study with sheep, llamas, cattle and other furry exemplars.
In the classroom, students use Play-Doh and gummy bears to model skeletal systems and understand anatomy. Out the back door, in the multi-species barn, they see the living, breathing counterparts to their textbook images.
At Smith Voke, students operate on an alternating schedule: one week taking math, English and other traditional academic courses, one week in vocational programs ranging from cosmetology to criminal justice.
In the animal science program, which has around 50 students this year, they learn grooming, artificial insemination techniques and how to administer oral medicines, among other skills. Animal science teacher Beth Wilson leads the dairy and egg industry instruction, while her colleague Ashley Holden focuses on meat and fiber.
Experience among students varies. Some have never seen a goat in their lives, others come from farming backgrounds. Their teachers start them out with the basics, working up to more specific skills by senior year. Students learn by skill rather than species, Holden said, explaining that there’s overlap among the farm’s animals.
“It’s really about the students getting to see the agricultural process from beginning to end,” Holden said.
In one exercise, seniors recently put together a sale catalog of the school’s dairy cattle, which they sell to local dairy farms, as the school no longer has a working milking program. With photos and names, the catalog describes each specimen by its important traits.
“910 is a dark marked Holstein with a strong topline, strong structured legs and a good pin setting,” one description reads.
This year, the program introduced individual plastic hutches for its calves, following a current trend in the industry.
“We try our best here to mimic the reality of farmers,” Wilson said.
Though the school tries its best to model true farm life, students still have it relatively easy. Their work is generally limited to the school day. They don’t have to milk cows long before sunrise, or worry about checking on pregnant animals in the middle of the night. The school employs three farm technicians, who take care of much of the work behind the scenes.
In the second year of a new program, the school bought around 80 chickens last fall, which students got to watch grow from chicks to full grown birds in eight weeks. In December, they slaughtered the birds in a state-certified mobile slaughterhouse and sent the meat to the school’s Oliver Smith Restaurant.
Students got to see the whole process — “from chick to chop,” said Kyle Bostrom, an agriculture mechanics teacher and head of the department.
This farm to table operation is another emphasis of the program. Sometimes the beef the students raise, which is generally processed at Adams Farm Slaughterhouse, ends up in the cafeteria — a treat compared to frozen hamburger patties, Wilson said.
The school has also set up a small lab in the old milking barn where students get to do dissections and necropsies.
In some ways, teaching students about agriculture is difficult when they’re on vacation during the most important period of the growth cycle.Then again, Holden and Wilson laughed, that’s the reason summer breaks were scheduled into the school year in the first place: so children could help out with the family farm.
Still, the Pioneer Valley is a great location, allowing students to participate in co-ops at local farms and groomers. At the end of 11th grade, students get the choice to opt out of shop week and instead spend 30 hours a week working at an approved site.
Wilson, who graduated from Smith Voke in 2004, said when she was a student they still milked cows, but that program has since ceased. Milking is such a time-intensive endeavor; without that responsibility students have a greater diversity of experiences, Holden said.
Right now, students are busy preparing for the state Future Farmers of America Convention, a three-day affair in March full of speakers and contests, where they have a chance to win grants and scholarships. The convention also serves to provide students with important leadership training, Holden said. F.F.A., the largest vocational student group in the country, has more than 600,000 members nationwide.
Throughout the Smith Voke curriculum, there’s a focus on college and career readiness.
“Farming isn’t just a hobby,” Wilson said. “It’s a job.”
Stephanie McFeeters can be reached at [email protected].
