Growing Faith Farms- SAE Visit #1

My First SAE Visit that I completed was at Paige Heigy's Entrepreneurship Project. She helps at her Family Business, Growing Faith Farms, where her focus is on Fall Decorations. The Business is a road side stand, that sells freezer beef cuts and pork year round, and then Fall Decorations from September to November. 

Paige is a senior at Cedar Crest High School and is the President of the FFA Chapter. She is also a student in my Agriscience 4 class. This SAE Visit occurred at her farm, which houses the business stand. 

I am grateful I got to visit her SAE Project in Prime time of the Fall decoration sale. Paige said that they grow their own pumpkins, and she helps to harvest them from the fields. Another one of her tasks is to price out the pumpkins with stickers, based on their size. Another one of her tasks is to cut and tie corn stalks into bundles, as well as bring in mums that they purchase from a wholesaler. A good chunk of Paige's time is spent preparing and decorating the wagons that they use to display their products. She restock's hay bales and is in charge of making more bales from their supply. So, in total their fall decoration stand sells pumpkins, hay bales, corn stalk bundles, and mums. When she is not spending time restocking products, she is helping customers pick out their favorite fall decorations. The layout of the roadside stand is 2 wagons full of goodies, as well as a small shed which houses the beef and pork freezers and the cash register. 

The preparations that I made prior to this SAE Visit, is I talked with my CT about what SAE visits look like for his students. He mentioned that typically, he does not do SAE visits, unless a student's project needs it. But, for my situation, he wanted me to see some good SAE projects, that were unique. 

As far as evaluating or rating the program, I think that she does a great job and she has gotten a lot of experience from her family, as she helps to run the business. I did not have any specific criteria that I graded her on, as they get 2 grades a marking period for their SAE projects and entries. The recommendations that I made for her project are to take a look at their income and expenses at the end of each year and compare their sales. It sounded like they did not compare these expenses, so I think it would be good for Paige to view these, in order to make financial decisions for the next year. We also talked about growing their own mums, but they mentioned that would be a lot of work, and they get them from a family member who wholesales them. Her records were kept on AET, for her contributions to the family business. 

For grading SAE Projects, every student in an Agriscience class must have an SAE Project, and the grade counts as its own class. This comes up on their schedules as a period 9, so if they do not do well with their projects, their GPA will greatly be affected. Mr. Haussener grades their projects twice a marking period, or roughly every 4-5 weeks. Since there is a wide variety of projects for students that have access to different resources, some projects are more involved than others. He allows students to bake/ cook or grow simple plants at home, but they still get experience keeping track of records. When he grades their projects, he looks for a specific number of journal entries. 

Overall, the main thing I learned from this visit, are different questions to ask the students during these visits. I am excited for this semester to get the chance to grade their projects in AET.