Et cetera : VS FFA members compete in District Soil Judging & Tri-State Dairy Judging

By: Kaylee Sorum, V-S FFA Co-Reporter Recently V-S FFA had two different FFA competitions. We had the District Soil Judging and Tri-State Dairy Judging. District Soil Judging was September 26th, 2018 at Hawkeye Community College. The FFA members that competed were Eric Henkle, Luke Radeke, and Grant Ries. Eric Henkle got fifth overall, this is his fourth year competing in the District Soil Judging Competition. “Hawkeye was a new location this year and the soil pits were very diverse, which made it more difficult to judge.”, stated Eric. He also mentioned he enjoys soil judging very much. Grant Ries got eighth overall and this is his first year competing in the District Soil Judging Competition. Luke Radeke also did a very nice job of carrying his weight for the team! As a whole, they earned fifth place out of 15 teams. This qualifies them for eligibility in competing at the State Soils Competition in Ames, Iowa. They all did a fantastic job at the District Soil Judging Competition, nice job boys! They went to State Soil Judging October 20, 2018 and the results will be reported in our October FFA article. Tri-State Dairy judging was September 13th, 2018 at Northeast Iowa Community College in Calmar. There were 17 members from our chapter that competed at this event. There were a total of 350 members there from three different states (Iowa, Minnesota, & Wisconsin). Three different types of competitions were hosted that day: Dairy Cattle Reasons, Dairy Cattle Non-Reasons, Milk Products and Quality. Reasons is when you judge dairy cattle and you have to give reasons on why you placed the cattle the way you did. Non-Reasons is when you just judge the cattle and give them a placing without an oral evaluation. Products is when you taste, smell, and look at different products and determine what they are. This can be dairy products, goat products, etc. They all did a very nice job at Tri-State Dairy Judging, way to go teams! The members in Reasons class were, Emma Arnold, Kane Kisling, Damon Payton, and Bailey Weeks. There was two teams for Non-Reasons, the first team was Alesha Brunssen, Cameryn Stephens, and Carly Williams. The second team was Raymond Goad, Caleb Rouse, and Jack Swanson. There were also two teams for Dairy Products, the first team was Drew Kottke, Nyomi Lanham, and Mycala Vanderheiden. The second team was Ryan Lane, Abby Morarie, Abbie Schmidt, and Mara Spalding.