BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — When you look around the FFA barns at the Kern County Fair, there's plenty of high schools represented, but did you know there's actually a single middle school that's been competing among them?
The fair is an escape and an opportunity to enjoy good food for most visitors, but for Edison Middle School students, it's a business trip. Among a sea of high schoolers, Edison students have been showing pigs, heifers, goats, rabbits, and guinea pigs.
For Kenneth Clark, a 6th grader at Edison and in his first year showing a pig, it's been an experience filled with highs and lows.
"It's felt good. It's felt, well, like it was tough. It's sometimes frustrating, but in the end, it's fun and it's relaxing," Clark said.
When asked how he felt about the competition ending, Clark expressed mixed emotions.
"I'm kind of sad, but it's, it's kind of relaxing that it's over, but I'm sad overall," Clark said.
While the students from Edison may be younger than their high school counterparts, they don't see that as a disadvantage. They see it as an opportunity to gain more experience and earn awards later in their FFA careers.
"I don't think it's a disadvantage, not whatsoever, actually, if anything, it might be an advantage. So I can get a hang of showing more, and I can get kind of the gist of it," Tyler Richwood said.
Macee Stowers is in her second year advising Edison students, and she agrees that this experience is setting her students up for success later in life.
"A lot of these high school kids will tell you, as I've talked to them throughout the week, they didn't get this experience being younger and having it now really adds to these kids, just beneficially, over time, they're going to be able to be years ahead of their peers once they do get to high school programs and have the basic hands on skills that help them and drive them to be better exhibitors, educated individuals in our community and overall stewards to the land," Stowers said.
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