FFA Behind the Emblem: Cashton

Around 100 members

Cashton, Wisconsin

Monroe County

Tell us about your chapter. We are a chapter in rural Wisconsin where our roots are deep in tradition. We have just over 100 members and we strive to help our community while building tomorrow’s leaders. We enjoy multiple leadership workshops put on by the state FFA along with hosting many of our own community events.

How does your chapter volunteer in the community throughout the year? Our FFA chapter stays involved in the community throughout the year by hosting and helping out at public events, including our annual pancake breakfast, our toy tractor show and our winter vendor market. For our toy show and vendors market, we do not charge our vendors a table fee to help them have a way to sell their products and not have to worry about the background fees. We also do not charge an admission fee. This way, 100% of the money is going to our vendors. We also find it important to give back during the holidays so every year we put together fruit baskets to give to families in need during Christmas. In the past few years, we have also made tie blankets as a club activity. We then donate them to places in need locally, including our fire department, nursing homes and hospitals.  We also find it extremely important to support our local farmers. Every year we purchase and deliver over 60 boxes of glazed donuts to local farmers during National FFA Week. Some other ways we have supported our local farmers are by hosting a farmers appreciation meal, and just last month, we got our elementary and middle school students involved by having them color ag-themed coloring sheets and write thank you notes to farmers. We then collected them and mailed them out to local farmers during harvest season to let them know we were thinking of them. A new event that this year’s officer team has started is our FFA fun days. This is where we host elementary-aged students on a few Saturdays and work one-on-one with them to make season-related crafts. Our first one was great and we are super excited for our next one in December. The officer team has a lot of fun activities planned, including decorating and eating Christmas cookies. Another large community service event we do is farm safety day for kids. We have been able to partner with the Monroe County Farm Bureau to host this free of charge for youth. We are busy planning for this currently and are excited to host it again on March 29, 2025.

What fundraisers does your chapter do throughout the year? Which is the most successful? Our two main fundraisers throughout the year include our annual fruit sale in the fall and our plant sale in the spring. Thanks to local support, our fruit sale funds a lot of our events for the entire year. Along with fruit, we also sell local products from Pasture Pride Cheese, Westby Creamery, VonRuden Meats and Foss Fine Meats. For our annual plant sale, the FFA purchases plugs in late winter/early spring and the horticulture class transplants and cares for them for three months. Then we host a plant sale, traditionally Thursday-Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend where our community members can purchase the students’ work. Last year, we partnered with our technology education program and sold plant hangers that they designed and made. We are also very fortunate to have an amazing FFA alumni and supporters group that helps fund student trips, FFA jackets and meals.

What are the biggest events of the year? We host a lot of events throughout the year, but the top two are our toy show and the winter vendor market. Our annual toy show is held in conjunction with our community’s fall festival the weekend after Labor Day. Along with our toy show, we also have a farm display contest, an antique tractor show, toy tractor raffle, and a brat and burger sale, all on the same day. It takes a lot of hours and effort from our members to pull this event off every year. From getting the gym set up to lining up participants in all of the events, selling raffle tickets, to cleanup, it takes many helpful hands to pull it all together. That same weekend we also hand out over 2,000 bottles of Kwik Trip milk through our community’s parade. To say our members are busy that weekend is an understatement. As soon as fall fest is over, we already begin planning next year by creating flyers and starting to advertise the next year’s event.

Last year, one of our officers wanted to start a vendor’s market. She enjoyed going to the farmers market in neighboring towns and wanted a way for our local craftsman to market their homemade products to our community. We had over 30 vendors in our first year. We were extremely impressed with the amount of community members who came and supported these businesses. We are currently planning our second annual vendors market which will be on January 25.

Another big event of the year is National FFA Week. We kick the week off with a community pancake breakfast. We then have daily dress-up days for our entire 6th-12th grade students along with lunchtime activities. During the week, we also host a brat and burger sale for all middle and high school students and staff where they can purchase a meal made by our FFA members. On Friday, we host a 6th-12th grade assembly where students participate in different ag-themed activities such as the farmer relay and turkey bowling. Then to bring the week to an end, many high school members get up early Saturday morning to deliver donuts to farmers while they are outside working in the cold. This year, our officer team is adding a new event to our week. To involve more elementary students, we are hosting a coloring contest. A few select winners will receive a prize.

A lot of our members’ favorite event is our annual Food for America Program (or as we call it, Ag Day). Every year we host a day where all of our elementary students rotate through stations to learn more about agriculture commodities. The high school students are in charge of picking different themes for each station, creating a 10–15-minute presentation on it and presenting it to the elementary students. The high school students love teaching the students about things they are passionate about. Last year, we hosted Ag Day at a local dairy farm. We had a few stations on dairy such as the robot milking facility, nutrition and calves. We also brought in some other fun stations such as ducks, pigs and plants. Each year our members are eager to get started on this and pick out their favorite product to teach about.

What is unique about your chapter? One unique thing about our chapter is we are not just active at our local level. We also participate in state and national events. We attend the National FFA Convention every year to collaborate with FFA members across the nation. We also have a great facility that has an animal lab, food lab, greenhouse, shop and classroom. This provides room for our members to bring in their supervised agricultural experience projects or to have different agriscience fair projects. We also have rabbits that stay in the classroom to teach our members how to take responsibility as they are in charge of caring for them. Another way our chapter is unique is because of the amount of community support we have, not only financially but also physically. Any time we need chaperones or an extra set of adult hands to help make an event run smoothly, they are there. We truly cannot thank them enough.

When was your chapter founded and how has it evolved? The Cashton FFA began in 1939 when 33 young men signed our official chapter charter. Over the past 90 years, the Cashton FFA Chapter has always been strong in what they do and believe in. One thing we are so proud of is the amount of community support we have always received. In those 90 years, we have seen so many great changes with national FFA that have influenced our own chapter. In 1969, the national FFA approved the addition of females to be FFA members. Today, more than 50% of our chapter, and currently 84% of our officer team are females. In 1965, the national FFA and the New Farmers of America merged to make the Future Farmers of America even stronger. Then in 1989, the official name of FFA (Future Farmers of America) was changed to the National FFA Organization. This was a huge step in our FFA inclusion. FFA is so much more than just farmers, and this was our first big step in showing the opportunities in agriculture. Today, we have a lot of members who were not born and raised on any sort of farm. But they understand and see the importance agriculture has in everyday life. They have opted to join FFA to help build the ag community.