Students enjoy fruit of their labor

By Archive

Published: June 16, 2008

While most young people make a point of avoiding school during the summertime, many Enterprise High School’s Future Farmers of America (FFA) students are continuing what they started in their garden plot behind the school system’s Service Center.

The students are literally enjoying the fruit… and vegetables… of their labor.

When the March 2007 tornado destroyed the high school, including its agriscience facilities, FFA advisors Mike Harrelson and Alan Waters had to improvise their programs to adapt to their new, temporary home at the Service Center.

Starting with the first-semester classes, students dug a garden on the back side of the property where they planted an onion patch. They also built a temporary shelter to do what they normally would have done in the greenhouse.

Early this year, second-semester students constructed their own greenhouse, which includes a climate control system, and they nurtured plants - some from seed and others from seedlings - that would be featured for sale in the annual Piney Woods Arts Festival.

Others plants would become the stars of the show in the students’ summer garden.

Waters, who heads up the school’s agriscience program, said many students have been tending to the garden this summer, which he said is a daily job, though most of the hard work has already been done.

“There’s really not a lot to do except the harvesting right now,” he said.

Waters and his students have already harvested all of the onions and potatoes, but now they are collecting squash, zucchini, about a dozen varieties of tomatoes, peppers and more. Coming soon are sweet potatoes, watermelon and peanuts.

When asked which FFA activity he is most looking forward to, 12th grader Matt Collum, next school year’s sentinel for the organization, said it’s the September peanut boil.

“I’m getting ready to eat some of them peanuts,” he laughed. “This is the first time we’ll be able to use our own peanuts in the peanut boil.”

Waters said the students reworked the harvested potato patch and planted five rows of peanuts, each with about 200 peanuts. If they all make it to harvest, they could collectively produce more than 20,000 peanuts.

Newly elected FFA officers said they are looking forward to the new school year, because they will be building on the new foundation laid in the past year.

“It’s going to be a good year,” said incoming vice president Jeslyn Jones.