Jay County FFA & Agricultural Education

06/18/2026

The 97th Indiana FFA State Convention has officially wrapped up and we are all back home! We had a great 4 days down in Noblesville learning, competing, celebrating and enjoying each others company.

We have had an exciting couple days with awards and degrees!

🐖 Madi Paxson was recognized for her 4th place finish with her Diversified Livestock Proficiency!

💰Carson Westgerdes was installed as the new Indiana District 8 treasurer!

📜 9 Jay County FFA members received their Hoosier Degree! An honor that combines SAE hours and monetary investment, FFA involvement at all levels, and community service. Congratulations to Elizabeth Barnett, Peyton Carpenter, Chloe Muhlenkamp, Stan Muhlenkamp, Madi Paxson, Eli Stockton, Clark Wellman, Levi Willmann, and Brooklyn Zimmerman!

🗣️ Kendall Schemenaur scored for 2nd place for the Freshman Extemporaneous Public Speaking contest!

The chapter received several awards including:

🏆 Gold Rated Chapter - National Chapter Award for Indiana and moves on to the national contest

🏃 1st Place for the Living to Serve - Healthy Lifestyles award

👷 4th Place for the Living to Serve - Safety award

We are stoked with the awards and honors, but we are hungry for more and better! State convention allows us time to reflect back on the year, but brainstorm where to improve. Officially, another state convention in the books!

06/16/2026

We are in Noblesville at The Arena at Innovation Mile for the 97th Indiana FFA State Convention! The first session is booming and we are ready for what the rest of the week brings. 🤠

Monday, we had 3 students compete in their qualifying LDE’s.

🏷️Matthew Fisher for Ag Sales
🗯️Kendall Schemenaur for Freshman Extemporaneous Public Speaking
🗣️Anna Fisher for Discovery Creed.

‼️We just found out that Kendall is in the top four for her contest and we will find her final placing on Thursday morning! ‼️

Today, we had the Veterinary Science and Ag Sales CDE contests with the following teams.

🦮Vet Science - Carson Westgerdes, Bailey Towell, Allison Tipton, Brooklynn Byrum, Aurora Michael, Kenady Lyons, Jaylee Twigg, and Peyton Carpenter.

🧾Ag Sales - Eli Stockton, Beckett Brandenburg, Cooper Glentzer, and Stan Muhlenkamp.

06/09/2026

Be there or be square! This meeting is open to anyone in grades 7-12 for this next school year!

06/09/2026

We’re still thinking of all the fun we had in Washington DC! WLC was one for the books, and we are excited to put our Living to Serve plans to action over the next year.

Aside from attending sessions for the conference, we also did a night tour of the monuments, went to the Library of Congress (and got library cards!), visited Arlington Cemetery, Holocaust Museum, and National Archives. ✈️📚

06/07/2026

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE

This past week these 5 members attended the Washington Leadership Conference, in Washington D.C. They learned how to be a leader help make a change in their community. They created Living To Serve plans, which are different plans they are hoping to implement to better the Jay Community. So stay tuned for those! And don’t forget to help make the change!

06/04/2026

05/14/2026

Today was spent harvesting our tilapia from our student designed and built aquaponics system! We bought these tilapia around a year ago and have been working out kinks in the aquaponics system with pumps, extra filtration systems, and what plants grow best in it.

After a full year of growing, it was time to harvest. Kids learned about the process of cleaning fish today and got to use their own hands to do it! So many students stepped out of their comfort zone and tried to help between catching the fish, cutting the gills, or filleting the actual fish.

We forgot to count how many fish, but we are guessing we will do around 200 by the time we finish! We will celebrate the success by having a department fish fry and letting the students reap what they harvested.

05/14/2026

Be there or be square. Ready to toss,race,chug,and conquer?See you at Ag Olympics.🌽🎇