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The Howard Orschell Endowment, a field of interest endowment at the Foundation, recently awarded funds to the CHS FFA to help pay for membership dues.  The endowment was created in memory of Howard Orschell to promote youth involvement in agriculture.  Howard Orschell grew up in Franklin County during the 1920’s.  Howard married Alice after he served in the Navy during World War II.  He and Alice bought a farm in the 1940’s and raised four children together.  Howard loved to farm and did his entire life.  Howard passed away in 2008.  His daughter, Beth, created an endowment to carry on her daddy’s love of agriculture.  Field of interest endowments can support a broad area of interests such as education, the arts, services or programs for youth or the elderly, environmental projects, health, recreational purposes, or civic affairs.  The Foundation will direct the distributions to the most appropriate programs within the field(s) designated by the donors.

The CHS FFA is an agricultural science program and has 150 active AET student accounts and is led by Gabe Nobbe.  Students develop their potential for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education. Money from the endowment was used toward district, State, and national FFA dues.  One of Nobbe’s goals this year is to make it so every student in an agriculture class is a member of FFA, which is a new program of FFA, and students are not allowed to pay the dues themselves.

This a picture of the FFA members at the Crop Scouting Competition held at Purdue this past August.  In the picture students are examining crops for injuries caused by insects.  The students had to discover the damage, identify what insect created the damage, and how and when to apply a control measure to limit the spread of the insect.  Gabe said, “We are getting ready to elect new FFA officers, finishing up our annual Fruit Sales Fundraiser, and getting committees organized to plan upcoming events.  The weekend of November 10-12, 6 students attended a leadership camp at the FFA center. We are also in the beginning stages of the developing and Agriculture Issues Presentation, and students are working independently on creating and expanding their Supervised Agriculture Experience Programs.”