Over 410 students flocked to Minarets High School for the annual Spring Ag Day on April 10, 2019, making this one of the biggest turn outs in Minarets history. These students ranged from grades K-8 and came from schools in the area including Spring Valley, North Fork, and Hillside as a new addition.
Three of our own students, seniors Dilan Basilla, Natalie Anselmo, and Michael Rezendes, were in charge of the event for their SLE. Dilan made sure to credit the others who had their part in helping. "We had 80 student volunteers help run the event efficiently and smoothly. We couldn't have done it without them. We also had industry professionals such as Bill Hillerman, a beekeeper, the Hiatt Familly (Bee Keepers), San Joaquin Regional Officer team, Cal Fire firefighters, Kylie Watson(Animal Feed Specialist)."
According to Dilan, "The idea behind this day was to educate youth about agriculture and the diversity behind it. We were promoting agriculture, career technical education, and growth of these young individuals." To accomplish this, the event included multiple interactive booths that were both entertaining as well as educational for all students alike. These booths included one for FFA, BeeKeeping, Tools, Stick Welding, Oxyacetylene cutting, Animal Health, Milk and Ice cream making, and showing livestock.
With plenty jam packed into the day, they all made sure the kids would have something nice to take away from the event as well. Dilan explained that "each kid was given bags with take-home materials such as pens pencils stickers raisins, bookmarks, coloring books, crayons. Each school was provided lesson plans for teachers to continue to educate their students back at school.".
Agriculture is a big deal to the state of California, especially in the Valley which we live in. Not everyone gets to see first-hand how agriculture plays a valuable part in our every day to day lives like these students were able to. To add about the experience, Dilan reported, "This experience provided an opportunity to learn about many of the basic parts of the industry and how their food gets to the table with hand-on experiences."
The annual event known as Spring Ag Day seems to be reaching more people year after year and lets hope Minarets keeps up the trend.
