Milford FFA students do well at state fair

Milford FFA students did well in Delaware State Fair competitions

Joshua Bethard, advisor for the Milford Future Farmers of America (FFA) students year round, explained that the Delaware State Fair is the “Super Bowl” of the agricultural industry in Delaware. It not only provides a showcase for many talents throughout the state, it is an extremely beneficial learning experience for students who enter exhibits at the fair.

“Fairs like this are essential. This is the Super Bowl for the agricultural industry in Delaware. There are a variety of exhibitors that will travel to other fairs and other events around the country. And obviously some of those events, by sheer volume of exhibitors, may be larger than what Delaware is, but Delaware State Fair, from a livestock perspective, is very much like the Super Bowl,” Bethard said. “You want to perform well. You want to do well at the Delaware State Fair. And it’s kind of something you work towards because this is months of preparation, of having that market animal or breed animal, and working with it and growing it and trying to make it so that it is show ready, and it is a ton of learning. There’s a lot of skills to be gained from being a part of projects like that. So I would say from a livestock perspective, it’s really, really big.”

Students competed in the dairy handling competition with Mason Foxwell winning first place

This year, Milford students did very well at the fair, according to Bethard.

“From a competition perspective, our poultry evaluation team finished fifth our and our Agriculture Issues team placed first. So, they will be going to the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana, in October, and they actually get to go to the Big E, which is a regional fair in Massachusetts in September,” Bethard said. “On Tuesday, we had our dairy cattle evaluation team finished third. And then we had a couple of students that were dairy handlers, and we had one student who earned first, that was Mason Foxwell, and she’ll be able to go to Big E and National FFA Convention also. And then we had a student placed fifth, and that was Dorothy Bradley, and that was in dairy handling also, Overall, it’s been it’s been a really good fair. We’ve been really blessed. We’ve accumulated some extra students that will be able to go to Nationals off of their participation in fair competition, which is always the goal.”

Milford FFA Ag Issues Team

In addition, Milford FFA student Julia Popelas won second in the Vet Science competition while Lucy Chorman was awarded for her Ag Placement display. The Landscape Display received a first place ribbon while the Educational Display, which focused on beach pollution and protecting the waterways received a third place ribbon.

“It’s been a really good fair for us. Every year is slightly different. This year we still had some of our staples FFA members participating in the dairy cattle department and the swine department, along with doing entries in the FFA building and competing in various competitions. So overall, it’s been a really, really good fair,” Bethard said. “At the annual awards breakfast, we had Mason Foxwell, who is our outgoing FFA president. She won the Abbott Award, which is exclusive for the FFA member who exhibited the most exhibits in the department, but specifically the one in the department that not only had the most exhibits, but also placed the most so it’s all based off of a point system and a metric. But she was able to win that. And then the Milford FFA chapter as a whole earned what’s called the Fantastic Fair Award, which is where, if they were to tabulate all of the entries and all the placings inside of the FFA building, the Milford FFA chapter had the most points of all chapters that exhibited in the building. So we received that award also.”

Educational Display Team

Bethard stated that the students were taking a few days off at the end of the fair, but that planning would begin immediately for next year’s state fair.

“I’d say from an FFA and an educator perspective there are lots of opportunities for our students to stay engaged over the summer and be able to showcase some of their projects that they did during classroom instruction. I think of our Ag Structures program that we have in Milford High School, where there are students that are doing woodworking projects and welding projects, and they’re allowed to take what they did during the school year, and they’re allowed to exhibit that hard work inside the FFA department,” Bethard said. “We have students that work inside of our greenhouse and take care of our plants, they’re able to take that plant that started from seed or started from a plug and that they’ve taken care of for months and watch grow. They’re able to showcase that at the fair and really be able to reap the benefit of all the hard work. The Delaware State Fair is so essential for projects, for showcasing hard work, as soon as this fair ends. I mean, the planning starts from the fair perspective for the Delaware State Fair, but it also starts from the exhibitors and those that participate in competitive exhibits in the FFA department, that clock starts again, and it’s 355 days until you get to showcase your hard work again.”