Dorothy and the Destiny Dairy Bar (An SAE Visit)

"Let's get a picture for my blog!"

In the world of School Based Agricultural Education lives a little something known as the Three Circle Model. Two of the three components of this model, Classroom/Laboratory Instruction and FFA/Leadership, are pretty well known. The third component that often does not receive as much attention as the other two is Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE). SAE is an opportunity for students to gain real world experience in different areas of agriculture by creating and completing a project. Under the SAE For All platform, each student will begin a Foundational project to explore career opportunities and agriculture literacy before advancing to an Immersion project. There are five categories of Immersion projects that a student can choose from including Placement/Internship, Ownership/Entrepreneurship, Research, School Based Enterprise, and Service Learning. Looking to the future, I want each of the three components of the Three Circle Model to hold equal weight in my classroom which is why I was incredibly excited to conduct an SAE visit with Ms. Darla Romberger last week.

The 2022 CV Marketing Team

For our visit we made arrangements with Amy Brickner and ventured out to Stover Farms to visit Cumberland Valley High School senior Dorothy Ross's Placement/Internship SAE project. After Ms. Darla Romberger received an email for potential help on the farm a year ago, Dorothy began her SAE project as a calf caretaker. Stover Farms is home to a herd of A-2 dairy cows managed by Amy Brickner. With the high rate of urban sprawl in Mechanicsburg, Amy noticed that her community was losing touch with where their food comes from. So, for the last few years it has been Amy's dream to start Destiny Dairy Bar where "the cows are the superheroes". Here different dairy products such as A-2 creamline milk, cheese curds, and ice cream will be sold. While Destiny Dairy Bar is an up and coming business that is just getting it's bearings, it was fantastic to learn about the business that will bring people onto the farm for education and quality dairy products. In fact, the 2022 Cumberland Valley Marketing Team is using this business to make their marketing plan, allowing us to 'kill two birds with one stone' during our visit. Furthermore, it was great to see Dorothy making connections about the importance of ag literacy in relation to her SAE project. 

Dorothy And Her Calves

As the calf caretaker, Dorothy is in charge of feeding, dehorning, vaccinating, and medicating over fifty calves. At Stover Farms Dorothy bottle feeds the calves until they are weaned at two months of age at which time she teaches them to eat and drink out of a bucket. Dorothy gets to develop responsibility in this position as she typically cares for the calves by herself during her shift. When asked what her favorite part of her SAE project was Dorothy replied, "There's no better job than feeding calves everyday. I also enjoy making connections with people and just being involved in the industry of agriculture".

From an advisors perspective, I believe that Dorothy has a high quality SAE project that challenges her to not only learn about the working parts of the dairy industry, but also to develop skills like communication, leadership, and responsibility as she completes her daily tasks. The only suggestion that Ms. Darla Romberger and I had for Dorothy after our visit was to add to her records in AET and apply for a Proficiency Award so that she could get recognized for the hard work she puts into her project. Dorothy will receive a grade every month for keeping her records up to date, but applying for the Proficiency Award would give her a chance to further develop them and think deeply about what she is getting out of her experience. 

Overall, visiting Dorothy and learning about her SAE project was a fantastic opportunity to learn more about how to integrate this part of the Three Circle Model into my future classroom. I also loved seeing Dorothy make those important connections between the classroom and the agriculture industry. Keep up the fantastic work at Stover Farms Dorothy!

'Taylor'ed with love,