SAE Visit: Potter County Style

 SAE VISIT (July 27th-August 2nd)

What is a better time to conduct an SAE (Supervised Agricultural Visit) then before the county fair? I conducted my visits at my home FFA chapter in Coudersport, Pennsylvania. It was very cool to see what the kids were doing in preparing for the fair. During my visit I was able to help clip a goat for showing. My teacher let me ask the questions and get a feel for what a visit could go like in a not so structured way. I asked about background on the goat, where is was from, what feed do they get, etc. However the answer that I wanted to hear was how this was going to benefit them in the long run and what skill or knowledge do they have from this project that they will take with them as they continue on. The answer seemed to stay the same they learned record keeping skills, responsibility, hard work and the list could go on. So getting the production side of agriculture. I decided it was time to check out our FFA's corn booth stand and see what kinds of expectations they had for this year's corn booth. It was definitely nice to see an Ag Business SAE being done, and it was this girls first year at the corn both working.
After meeting with the two different students I would check in on them at the fair to see how things were going. Constantly checking in to see what progress they made. Both students did very well. The student with the goat sold it at the livestock auction, and the other student at the corn booth sold enough corn to pay for her trip to ACES.

I definitely believe that SAE visits are a very important part of the SAE project as a whole. You really get to bond with your student and see their interests and what kind of goals they have set for themselves. This is great because then you can aid them in reaching those goals. I know that even though those students were not my "own" students I was just as proud to see them succeed.