My Amazing FFA Week!!

After spending Monday with Franklin Simpson and South Warren, Logan and I headed back to Bowling Green to meet up with Joenelle and the Warren Central FFA for an afternoon of workshops, food and cake!

Warren Central has a great chapter, with numerous members eagerly excited for workshops and the upcoming Barren River Regional FFA Day. I was able to meet several awesome members and have fun during some workshops!

After leaving there, Logan and I drove 3 hours back to UK, which was quite interesting, with an entertaining phone call from Alex Land.

Thursday afternoon, I headed out to Bourbon County High School for their Greenhand and Chapter Degree Ceremony. I also got to meet several really awesome members and took quite a few pictures, especially of their cool "greenhand" poster!

Friday afternoon I headed down to E-Town to John Hardin High School for their Greenhand Banquet. I had an awesome time talking to all the members, eating a "greenhand" cake, and checking out an awesome FFA Week Showcase!

I left E-Town, to head back to Spencer County, home of Kevin Herndon, where I met up with Kevin, Audie, and Jake. It was so fun getting to spend time with these guys, especially those Western KY kids I never see. We also watched a really awesome movie, Never Back Down.

Alex, Logan, Elizabeth, and Lauren all joined us for Saturday's big event, the Spencer County Invitational. It was so awesome to see so many chapters from across the state preparing for regional days. While we ran the speech prep room, we also got to eat with some awesome members. It was during lunch when Alex and I took a poll to see what the majority of members called drinks. I call every "soft drink" a coke, while she calls it "pop". My argument was that pop is a type of music, like Britney Spears! Anyways, Pop won. After the poll the state officers taught the members a dance, and played Ships and Sailors, and a huge Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament, which was awesome! Congratulations to all the winners at the Invitational!

While at the Invitational we were reunited with several Past State Officers!! Like, Derek Adams (Poppa SOC), Dustin Johnson, Samantha Clark, and Magen Roberts(Momma SOC). Sorry if I left anybody out!!

After all this fun and excitement, the State Officers headed back to Kevin's house for a nap, apples to apples, ribs, and State Convention Planning. We got alot planned for convention, and we are getting super pumped for June 7th to roll around!!

In the course of that week I drove 859 miles, it was totally work it, so thank you KY FFA!!! I had an amazing FFA Week as a KY FFA State Officer and I will never forget it!

Embrace the Challenge KY FFA!!

Gabrielle Burgess

Barren River State Vice-President

FFA WEEK!!!!

My week started off wonderfully by making a visit to Franklin Simpson High School FFA where "Momma SOC" (Magen Roberts) teaches. I visited with her Agriscience Class who were a wonderful group of sophomores. We talked about prioritizing and how we should keep focus on what we needed to work on and not the things of less importance! These students were great to work with, as they were all very passionate about so many different things! After the workshop was over I completed a Question and Answer session with the students and Ms. Roberts.

I then made a 15 minute trip down the road to have an afternoon of workshops with a newly charted chapter in Warren County, South Warren is the 5th high school in Bowling Green, and the 4th with an FFA Chapter. This is the first year for students at South Warren and they have quickly recruited 120 members! I was joined by Joenelle Futrell, and Western Kentucky Unversity Collegiate FFA for an afternoon of workshops. I believe that I can speak for Joenelle and WKU Collegiate FFA, when I say that I had an amazing time at this chapter. The students were all very active and interested in the FFA world!

Needless to say Day 1 of FFA Week was an amazing start!! I can't wait to see what the rest of this week has in store!!

Embrace the Challenge!!

Gabrielle Burgess

Barren River State Vice-President

Catch up Time!

A few of the events in my FFA life from the past few weeks... in no particular order.

1) Northern Kentucky Region FLC! It took months of meetings, facebook messages, emails, phone calls, and text messages with my regional officers, but on February 4, the NKY FLC finally came to life! With the auditorium and registration area decorated, workshop classrooms set up, and t-shirts given out, roughly 150 freshman braved the snowy weather (and their advisors driving!) and arrived ready for an awesome day of leadership! I had the opportunity to lead a workshop on leadership with Alex Land and we had a blast meeting and teaching the freshman! A HUGE shout out to the Northern Kentucky regional officers for helping make this a success!

2) Fleming County! This past weekend, I got to hang out with the executive council of Fleming County (and Elizabeth and Joenelle were there too) while they led workshops for the middle school ag students at Simons Middle School at an ALL NIGHT conference! Now, I'm someone who likes my sleep, so this was a bit of a challenge for me, as you can probably tell by the pictures taken at about 6:00 am... I look a little rough. No matter how much sleep I had to make up, this night holds some of my favorite memories of my year as a state officer so far. Chasing school ghosts, playing with one of those awesome rubber balls from Wal-Mart in the hallway, and just running around the school having fun made this one trip I won't soon forget!

3) Frankfort! Three days this month I got to visit our state's capital and meet with legislators who make decisions affecting agriculture in Kentucky. This was a one of a kind opportunity for me and while I have visited the capitol several times in my life, I had never gotten the opportunity to see how our government works or meet the people who make it run. Working with the state officers of other career and technical organizations in the state, we worked to share the importance of CTE classes and ensure that the funding exists to keep them in our schools.

February has been a busy month, but one that I wouldn't trade for anything. I can't wait to see what happens between now and June!

Next up: National FFA Week! Look for another blog post coming soon!

Kevin Herndon

State Sentinel

My kind of storm!

Typically, I am always afraid of the word "storm." If I hear anything about a thunderstorm coming, I usually pray that nothing bad happens and that the storm consists of five minutes of light sprinkles of rain and maybe one clap of thunder. If I hear that snow is coming, I pray that the temperature jumps 30 degrees by the next day and that the sun pops out so the snow melts so I'm not stuck at home (like I am now.) When I hear ice storm, I literally cringe at the thought of having no electric, no technology, and definitely not being able to leave the house! But from the time my team planned the event, "Storm the State" in November, I was counting down the days until the four day storm was underway. I was so excited to visit a part of the state that I rarely get to visit.

On Sunday January 2, 2011, I was headed for Western Kentucky (which became my home for the week) with Logan and Kevin. This was the day that I had been anticipating for the past month and a half. I was pumped as we drove nearly four hours to get to Audie's house in Webster county where we met up with Jake. Logan, Jake, and I were the "Western Kentucky group."

Our first day of Storm the State was a complete success. Logan, Jake, and I had lunch with the Webster and Crittenden county FFA officers to kick off our first day, then we traveled on over to Livingston Central High School to do our first workshop. We had a lot of fun with the members at LCHS, but our day didn't end there. That night, we drove to Paducah where we went bowling with the officers from Heath and Reidland! Jake lives in Paducah (which is where Heath and Reidland are located) and Logan and I went to camp with Heath and Reidland this past summer, so it was great to be reunited with them!

On Tuesday, we started out the day by doing a first period workshop at Lyon County. This class was a group of freshmen, but they were all very enthusiastic and extremely easy to work with! We left from Lyon County to travel to Caldwell County where we did two workshops. One of the workshops was in Mr. York's room with a very unique class. He had a class of all females and it was a shop class. That was something I had never heard of before, however, I absolutely loved it! Next, we moved on over to Trigg County where we did a double class workshop of over 50 students! We ate a good meal with Graves County that night, but unfortunately, that wasn't the end of our night.

We drove back to Paducah to Jake's house to pack up our things to go back to Audie's for the night, and on our way there, Jake got sick. Logan and I had no idea what to do, so Logan pulled over as often as Jake needed and I called his mom. After about an hour and 45 minutes, we finally arrived at Audie's where Audie's mom took care of him! She ended up taking him to the emergency room a few hours after we had gotten there and it turned out that Jake had kidney stones!! Jake's parents came to get him soon after the hospital visit, and sadly, that ended Jake's experience of Storm the State. (He is feeling better now though!!)

Wednesday morning, Logan and I headed to Henderson County where we stayed for a couple of hours to do three workshops. We headed to McLean County to do two workshops at the end of the school day. That night, we went to Owensboro to eat with the three Daviess County Chapters... Owensboro Catholic, Daviess County, and Apollo. We had around 20 members to come eat with us at Ole Hickory (which is a new favorite place to eat of mine.) That night, we stayed with Kaylee, a Green River Regional officer and the OCATH President!

Thursday, our final day of Storm the State was a big travel day. We started out by visiting with a few members from Ohio County, then driving to Union County where we did another double class workshop, and then to both of the Muhlenburg schools. That night, we ate in HOP TOWN where we had 35 members show up to eat with us!

All in all, the storm that happened in Western Kentucky was extremely successful. We visited with 23 schools, met over 530 FFA members, did 13 workshops, and traveled over 1,250 miles in four days!

The week of Storm the State is one of my most memorable weeks for sure. Not only during my year of state office, but in my lifetime.

Since the snow storm has left me cooped up in my house for the past couple of days, all I have thought about is the previous week that I spent in Western KY. I continuously look at pictures from the Storm the State and I have talked with many people that I met last week!

This is one storm that I was not afraid of. The word excitement doesn't even begin to describe my true feelings I had for the Storm. This is one storm that I would be completely fine with if it happened more often!

p.s - Stay safe in this snow storm that has moved across Kentucky this week!

Alex Land
Lake Cumberland State Vice President

Take it back now, y'all

I have to once again catch up!

Sunday, Oct 17th-- Oasis & Madisonville Park

The Pennyrile Region officer team met to catch up and set plans for their Chapter officer retreat Night coming up soon!

Friday, Oct 29-- Madisonville North Hopkins High School

I had a blast at MNHHS. I got to see a lot of members/friends I haven't seen in a while. Also, Mr. Moore, my former regional advisor and Hopkins Centrals retired advisor was substituting so I got a treat getting to see him.

The groups were huge, which was great! I had great participation as well. As always a record was broken during the orange eating activity. TRAVIS BREWER ate an orange in 19 seconds!!! BUT.. it's not over yet. He was determined to beat that time. The next time he came in he tried again.. 12 SECONDS!!! I've never seen someone inhale an orange so fast in my life! Aside from that Madisonville has a great group and has a bright future ahead of them with new teaching staff.

Friday, Nov 5th-- Christian County High School

Well to start the day off there was a meeting before school. I was impressed by the attendance. There is a lot of dedication in the CCHS chapter. It's not every chapter you have members that will get up early and come before school. I first want to commend them for that. They are also working very hard to help us achieve our state goals.

Also, to start off the day I received breakfast from McDonald's courtesy of Mallory Morris. Christian County had one of the most interactive groups I have yet to experience. We had a great time and I truly feel like they members got something from the workshop. I had so much cooperation and had zero problems. Y'all did great guys! Christian is looking strong this year so watch out!

Sunday, Nov 7th-- Tumbleweed

The Pennyrile regional officer team met to make preparations for their CORN (Chapter Officer Retreat Night). We had a good time with some good food and laughs. This team is on their A-Game!


Well that's all.. for a bit, at least.

EMBRACE THE CHALLENGE!!

Audie Cherry
Pennyrile Region State Vice President

National Officer Magic

Did you ever wonder who elected the 6 national officers? I never really thought about it until this summer when I had the opportunity to meet 3 national officers. It was then I realized that there were 9 members who had the chance to meet so many national officer candidates.

After being nominated by a national officer, I had to fill out an application. I was then selected by the 6 national officers out of 48 candidates.

A conference call would be made to the 9 selected for the committee and the adults who would oversee us.

The next 6 weeks would be filled with reading 36 applications. I would also learn the ins and outs of the process in which I would put my complete trust into so we the nominating committee could select the 6 best to serve our organization as the National Officers. Eventually I would learn each of these candidates and feel like I had known them forever.

When it was time to drive to Indianapolis on Thursday Oct. 14, 2010 I was so excited. I felt unprepared, but that's why we had 3 days of training before interviews started. On Friday morning I met the other committee members and training began. I retained so much information in those 3 days, because I wanted to find the 6 BEST, to serve for our organization.

Then, Sunday night rolled around, which was the first time we were actually able to meet the candidates and put faces to names. We began to learn more and more about these candidates and the process had began. The real process, the interviews started Monday morning at 7. We were excited and nervous. I can't imagine how the candidates felt, because we felt like we were about to be judged.

Round 1 was on Monday, Round 2 was on Tuesday. Then the cut would be made on Tuesday night. We all felt horrible, because we weren't going to get to know half of the candidates. The group was narrowed down from 36 to 19. Round 3 and 4 were held on Wednesday. That night after interviews we had our casual activity. We went and ate and went bowling with the candidates, and it just gave us a real chance to see how these candidates intereacted outside of the interview room. The last and final round was held on Thursday morning, and it was becoming more real to us that during that night we would hold the biggest secret.

After making our decision we were seculded and we were to keep the biggest secret of our life, until it was announced on Saturday afternoon. Friday afternoon, we, the nominating committee, watched the National Officer jackets be made, that was one of the most amazing feelings ever. As I pressed start on the name of a jacket, it had officially sank in that I had a part in helping our organization.

Friday couldn't have gone by any slower, I was anxiously awaiting the moment when my secret would be public knowledge. And then the moment came, and I was nervous, and sick to my stomach. Again I can't imagine how the candidates felt, because I knew who the officers were but I felt like I was waiting for my name to be called.

Then the moment came when all 6 names had been called and I watched the other 30 candidates cry as their dream had been reached by others. Then I watched the 6 on stage who had reached their dream. The reactions were the same, shock, some had been heartbroken and some cried tears of joy. My heartbroke as I watched those who weren't selected because I knew how great of people they were. I remembered so many people telling me I wasn't ruining their dreams, I was helping them take a step towards where they needed to be.

Since Convention, I have been able to keep in touch with the retired national officers, the nominating committee, the candidates who weren't elected and the new national officer team. I have gained so many amazing friends, who help me daily and I'm so thankful for that. I am so thankful for the opportunity that was given to me, and for having the supporting teammates who allowed me to take time away from them so I could serve in this way.

And that's the magic of the National Officers and how they get there!

Gabrielle Burgess

Barren River State Vice-President

"Embrace the Challenge"

Chapter Visits and CORN!

Hey guys! I would first like to remind everyone in the Purchase Region that there will be a Chapter Officer Retreat Night(CORN) at Graves County High School this Tuesday, November 16th from 4:30 to 7:00. There WILL be Pizza ordered and entry costs $5:00 a person. The goal of CORN is to bring all chapter officers in the Purchase Region together for a night of mingiling, fun, and leadership activities! Its gonna be a BLAST so I hope everyone who wants to come will! I will be present as well as Audie Cherry too so if there are ANY questions you have you can contact me, Jake Adair at 270-994-6181 or Mr. Howard from Graves County at 705-7318.
On the other side of the spectrum Chapter visits, hay rides and bonfires have been keepin me pretty busy! Calloway, Carlslile, Hickman, and Marshall have had me come down so far, and the books are gettin full with everyone else as well! Just want to say to you, the members, that YOU GUYS ROCK! I have had AWESOME participation in the games weve played in the workshops and your enthusiasm is AMAZING! So keep up the good work guys! Ill be around to the rest of the region ASAP!

Jake Adair
Purchase Region Vice President,
Kentucky FFA