ABOVE: From left: Truman's Lili Wiens, Avril Wiens, Alex Liebenstein, Lucy Bowers and Audrey Hendricksen take a break from the rush of 2025’s FFA National Convention to relax and pose with one of the signs. Submitted photo

MARTIN COUNTY – Across Martin County, the Future Farmers of America (FFA) are celebrating their accomplishments and group spirit with National FFA Week.

At Fairmont High School, there are currently around 50 students involved. FFA Advisor Andrew Moeller said Fairmont’s FFA is involved in several activities.

“We try to do some different community involvement events throughout the year,” he said. “There’s a road ditch we clean up south of town on Highway 15. We will do other service learning activities with the food shelf or things like that. Then our monthly meetings are always talking about different opportunities.”

Since last year’s FFA Week, Moeller said there are several areas where he has seen success.

“We’ve done a good job with our CDEs, our career development events,” he said. “We’ve seen some success with that. We’ve had several teams make it to state. We had a top-five finish at the state convention last year with our livestock evaluation team, and they got to go and compete at the American Royal down in Kansas City. That was a really big accomplishment for them, and really cool to see that.”

For FFA Week this year, Moeller said they will have dress-up days each day for the FFA kids and a giving day Thursday, where FFA members take a day to give back to others.

Currently, Moeller said he feels Fairmont is trending in the right direction overall.

“There’s definitely some strong desire at the top end of things,” he said. “With our up-and-coming officers and returning officers, we have a good group of kids that are really passionate and involved with what they’re doing. They all have their own area they like to participate and compete in within the organization.”

Due to the end of the trimester coming up for Truman, they celebrated FFA Week last week. Truman Senior and FFA Member Samantha Urban said a lot of what their chapter of 30 members does is for the community.

“We do grain drives, we do fruit sales, which is most of our funding for our chapter,” she said. “We teach people about the agriculture in rural Minnesota and involve ourselves in the community alongside that.”

Of everything they’ve been able to do this year, Urban said her favorite was the pancake breakfast.

“I like seeing all the community faces and being able to serve the community that way,” she said.

As for how they prepare for FFA Week, FFA Member and 10th grader Lili Wiens said they have a couple of meetings to discuss what, as a group, they would like to do.

“We take time planning,” Urban said. “We ask the student body what they would all like to do for activities. We make sure we go around town and inform the community about the activities and the breakfast that we have.”

This year, Truman FFA had dress-up days and activities each day of the week, including volleyball and trivia. FFA Member and 10th grader Sylas Detloff said overall, he enjoys FFA and where the Truman chapter is headed.

“I think we’re always helping our community in teaching,” he said. “We like to teach our youth here at Truman about agriculture, and I think we always have fun doing it. We have fun as a chapter.”

ABOVE: The MCW Fish & Wildlife team. From left: Tanner Anderson, Brock Jagodzinske, Gavin Schoen and Kane Wohlhuter (Eli Meixell not pictured) at Minnesota State University in Mankato where they worked with a professor on specimen identification, as part of a career development event. Submitted Photo

Granada-Huntley East Chain’s (GHEC) FFA is affiliated, meaning those in ag or shop classes are able to participate in FFA without paying a fee.

“It’s more intracurricular than extracurricular,” GHEC FFA Advisor McKenzie Wagelie said. “That’s been our big focus for the past couple of years. We have 120 members. Not every single person does something, but we still have a pretty high percentage, with like 70 to 80 active members doing an activity or an event throughout the school year.”

With GHEC’s FFA in its sixth year back as a re-formed chapter, Wagelie said they have had plenty to be proud of over the past year.

“At state convention, our chapter received sixth place national chapter,” she said. “That means we were a top six chapter in the state of Minnesota. We also received the three-star rating at national convention for that national chapter as well, which is the highest rating you can get. A lot of involvement and hours put in by our members.”

For FFA Week, Wagelie said planting the seed for preparation starts early.

“We started preparing for it last June,” she said. “We have an officer training and retreat where we train our officers on leadership and what the year is about. We do a lot of planning before the school year starts. We get some brief details discussed, but otherwise it’s an ongoing thing from June until obviously now.”

As everything gets underway, Wagelie said they decorated the hallways over the weekend and have dress-up days, an elementary school ag lesson, and a beanbag tournament.

Considering the short timeframe they’ve been back, Wagelie said GHEC FFA is looking to keep the ball rolling.

“We continue to grow each year, get more kids involved,” she said. “The dedication from our officers and the members, it allows us to put on these events. If we can’t have the participation, we wouldn’t be doing any of these things we are able to as well as our community that supports us financially and by being there as well.”

Martin County West (MCW) FFA currently stands at 95 members. FFA Advisor Stephanie Wohlhuter said their career and leadership development events are a huge part of what they do, as well as competition and projects.

“There’s probably 26 different teams or individuals that go to different competitions,” she said. “The culmination is competing at state convention in April. We also do fundraising projects to run our chapter and fund our community service projects. Community service is a huge part of the FFA. We have the corn drive to raise money, we do a maverick holiday helpers project where we spend probably $5,000 buying gifts for students in our district that might not otherwise be receiving them.”

This year, Wohlhuter said they have some activities that get everyone involved for FFA Week. This includes a daily country song trivia and a challenge to find hidden rubber ducks. FFA members will also compete in an Ag Olympics, featuring challenges such as chugging milk from a calf bottle.

At this stage, Wohlhuter said there has been some rebuilding as they continue to rise to the occasion and seek new horizons.

“We have lost some students to graduation that were really strong,” she said. “We brought in a new ag teacher this year and a second FFA advisor. It’s been a period of growth, but it’s been very positive. Kids are rising to the challenge and getting excited about things. We have 38 of our FFA members signed up to go to Belize in the summer of 2027. That’s the first time we’ve done an international FFA trip. I’m nervous, but super excited about it.”