A brighter future

T. J.

H-M Supporter - Gold Member
H-M Supporter Gold Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2015
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Often, on this forum as well as other places, I hear the lament that kids these days are only interested in video games and school vocational programs have gone the way of the dinosaurs. So I thought I would share a story of what's happening at the little school in my hometown.

At several of the major livestock shows in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Ft. Worth, etc), in addition to the animals, they also have competitions for 'Agriculture Mechanics'. Young FFA members build projects, either individually or as a group, and bring them to the shows to compete for recognition and prizes. They are judged on the quality of their projects and the skill required to build them, as well as their communication skills when they present their projects to the judges. The FFA chapter at our local school has had a very successful ag mechanics program through the vocational agriculture classes taught here. Our community is small (town population ~900; county population ~2,500), and we are situated in the heart of the farming and ranching country of the Texas panhandle.

I would like to share some photos that I took today during an open house they had for the community to show off this years projects. It will take me several posts to get them all in, so stay tuned... Keep in mind that all of the equipment you are about to see was built entirely by high school ( and a few junior high) kids.
 
TJ, those are some amazing young men! Thanks for sharing.
 
Device for pulling silage trucks out of the mud with a tractor:
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Silage has to be cut when it is ready, regardless if the field is muddy. Therefore sometimes the silage trucks get stuck and have to be towed through the field. The green parts are the device, the rest is a stand to show it off. The horizontal bar attaches to the drawbar of the tractor. The vertical portion attaches to the 3-point. It is designed to that the tractor driver can hook on to a silage truck without getting out of the cab.
 
Dump trailer built by the senior class:
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Notice the tailgate in the last two pics. It is capable of hinging at the top for dumping, or hinging at the bottom to act as a ramp. The kids came up with this design themselves. They told me it did take a couple of tries before they got it right :)

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Livestock trailer:
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Somehow I managed to only get one pic of this one, but it is pretty nice!
 
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