Traveling Greenhouse Project<\/a> through Grow Southeast and the Sustainable Southeast Partnership.<\/p>\nKake will get the greenhouse for one growing season, from March to October.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be a stepping stone, a way for the community to engage in cultivating food,\u201d said Lia Heifetz, food sustainability consultant for Sustainable Southeast Partnership.<\/p>\n
The mobile greenhouse is also a mobile classroom. It comes with a curriculum and a step-by-step guide to making things grow.<\/p>\n
With the vegetables they grow, Cook plans to teach the FFA students about starting and running a business. She said they\u2019ll set up a vegetable stand in the summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many chances do they get to start a business at this age? They\u2019ll find out how a business works, the economics of it, the hard work of it,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
The profits will go toward future FFA trips, like the state convention held every April. This year, it\u2019s in Palmer.<\/p>\n
Cook said her daughter participated in the state convention in Anchorage last year where she learned things people might not associate with FFA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did a marine competition up there and it was teaching how to mend nets, how to count salmon eggs, how to tell if an oyster was good or bad,\u201d Cook said. \u201cThey learned how to use survival suits, what to do in an emergency situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the greenhouse leaves Kake in October, Cook doesn\u2019t expect the food growing to end. She wants the students to use the mobile greenhouse as a model and build other greenhouses to sell in Kake.<\/p>\n
She hopes FFA will expand to other Southeast communities as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these kids need some motivation to see what they can do in their lives and know that people care enough to help them succeed,\u201d Cook said.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re interested in starting an FFA chapter in your community, contact FFA Alaska state coordinator Kevin Fochs at 907-707-9710 or email kevinfochs@alaska.edu.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Historically, FFA has stood for Future Farmers of America. That\u2019s not the case anymore. \u201cPeople have to expand their horizons and think outside the box,\u201d said Marsha Cook, advisor for the Kake City School District FFA chapter, which just started in January. \u201cIt can be so many things now. It can be oyster farming, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34035"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}