The FFA is a national Organization which promotes leadership, respect, and responsibility through education in Agriculture. In high school, you can be enrolled into agriculture classes and are automatically a member of the FFA. As a member, you must have an SOEP or, Supervised Ocupational Educational Project.
A picture of me spending "quality" time with my lamb Freshman year. :-)
I am in my third year of the program and my SOEP this year, as it has been since my Freshman year, is a breeding ewe. Funny thing about this ewe is that she was actually supposed to be a market lamb and be sold at auction the first year of fair, but I couldn't bear to sell my lamb to be slaughtered, so I kept her and entered her into a breeding class. Because they were only lambs, the 4-H breeding ewes won over the two FFA ones.
This is me with my lamb (left) and my friends lamb (right) just before fair freshman year.
During my Sophomore year, I showed her again as a ewe this time instead of a lamb and she got second place, once again being beat out by a 4-H ewe. What can I say? they've got it rigged *hehe*
Here is a picture from this years ('98) fair.
It is now my Junior year and guess what? My Ewe is pregnant! She was bred in late july and is expected to lamb in mid-December. This is my first BBQ, so Im a little nervous about what to expect, but Im very excited at the same time. I will be sure to post pics of my ewe and her babies as soon as they are born. So make sure to come back around December. :-)
Finally got a picture of my pregnant li'l girl :-)
Ok, here's the update on my ewe. :-( Apparantly since we had such a hot summer this year in California, she re-absorbed the fetus and thus, did not give birth in December like we'd planned on. Due to this, I had to buy a new lamb to sell at fair this year. So now, I have TWO sheep! hehe.. My new one is small. She was from Chico and is younger than the rest. I hope that I can get her to take in enough feed so she'll finish correctly for fair. I will try to get some pictures of her up as soon as I can.
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