Money raised for Normal ag programs

NORMAL – The FFA chapters from Normal Community High School and Normal West came together as one over the weekend during the 32nd annual Heartland FFA Alumni Auction.

The biggest event of the year for the Unit 5 agriculture program included a silent and live auction along with a meal.

“It goes to help with student scholarships,” explained Normal West FFA vice president Jaden Thompson. “For collecting auction items, we actually split the town in half and (Normal) Community went to half while West went to the other half.”

Normal West’s Bailey Wight was among those reaching out to local businesses seeking donations for the event.

“We did get a lot of big companies to donate to our auction and they donated some pretty cool things,” she said.

Kenzie Kraft is involved with the FFA leadership team at Normal Community High School. They decided to eliminate the various officer positions in an effort to help each other out more.

“If there’s something that they’re interested in, they can just take it over and they don’t have to worry about if it’s under their job title.”

Normal West FFA president Clayton Thomas said this has been a good year so far for the chapters as NCWHS conducted an ag career expo for 8th graders at Parkside Middle School where almost 400 students were introduced to different career areas. NCHS students conducted a presentation at Evans Junior High to teach students about the opportunities in the high school ag program.

Both high schools maintain vegetable gardens and orchards. Produce raised at NCWHS was used by Culinary Arts classes in the fall. Meanwhile, students at NCHS used the school gardens as their SAE project and sold sweet corn and pumpkins.