Colten Panter sold a pig for $6,000 last year—not bad for a high school kid who didn’t even grow up on a working farm. The swine was a spotted gal named Dottie. He got her as a piglet and sold her when she’d fattened up to 250 pounds.
It should come as no surprise that a young man with such a blend of barnyard smarts and business acumen should ascend to the presidency of the Future Farmers of America chapter at Tomales High School.
He now has his eyes on a prize recently attained by three recent Tomales grads: Megan Donaldson, Brinley Stevens and Anastasia Bonini.
This fall, at a national convention in Indianapolis, the trio donned their blue-and-gold F.A.A. blazers and received the organization’s American Degree, an honor achieved by fewer than 1 percent of the F.A.A.’s 1 million members across the nation.
Their achievements are a testament to the strength of Tomales High’s agricultural education program, which has attracted about 40 of the school’s 130 students and is enjoying something of a renaissance.
Jen Murphy, the program director since 2017, has broadened the program’s offerings, and she was recently joined by Nomar Isais, a shop instructor who grew up on a Point Reyes dairy and took over the school’s ag mechanics program this year.
Armed with a state grant, last month the school added a new ag education classroom fitted with commercial-grade appliances where guest instructors will share their expertise in farm-to-table cuisine.
“I want to get people from local industries in there to teach them practical skills that the kids can use after high school, like how to make cheese or shuck an oyster or make sourdough, how to sharpen a knife or process and handle meat,” Ms. Murphy said. She emphasized that learning about food production can offer a window into science—her teaching specialty.
Tomales has produced its share of American Degree recipients before, but never three in a single year.
“It’s pretty special to get three at once, especially considering how small our chapter is,” said Ms. Murphy, who grew up on a Sonoma County cattle ranch and is in her sixth year teaching at Tomales High.
The F.A.A. motto is “Learning to do, doing to learn, earning to live and living to serve.” As students progress through the program, they earn a series of degrees, something akin to accumulating scout badges. Like an Eagle Badge, the American Degree is a mark of special distinction.
At regional, state and national contests, F.A.A. chapter members show off their poise and agricultural know-how as well as their cows, chickens, pigs and other barnyard creatures.
Which brings us back to Dottie, Colten’s $6,000 swine. In F.F.A. parlance, she was a market animal, which means she was raised to be sold at auction. That is one way students can reach the $10,000 they must earn during their high school careers to qualify for the American Degree. A second requirement: investing $7,500 of that revenue back into their ag projects or their post-secondary education.
They maintain records of every penny that comes in and every penny that goes out.
Dottie’s fate was to land on a dinner plate. Colten sold her at the Sonoma County Fair, where F.F.A. boosters—a mix of local farmers and ag business owners—come to bid.
To enhance their chances of making a sale, the students write letters to potential buyers, encouraging them to participate and, in the process, honing their own marketing skills. Part of their sales pitch includes letting buyers know that they can write off their purchase as a tax-deductible educational donation.
“F.A.A. teaches us valuable life skills, like keeping track of your money,” Colten said. “We keep an online record book with a daily log or weekly journal entries to track our progress.”
This year, Colten is raising a white steer named Karl that he bought from a rancher in Iowa for $3,500 with earnings from his blockbuster sale of Dottie.
“In the morning, before school, I get up and feed him his grain and hay and check his water, and I do a daily health check on him to make sure his nose isn’t runny and his manure looks good and is clear of blood and different stuff like that.”
But the Tomales F.F.A. is not just about showing livestock. The school has the last shop program in Marin County, where students learn metal and woodworking skills and the value of a little ingenuity. They work with whatever materials are on hand, much of it donated farm equipment in need of repair.
On a recent day, Taryn McIsaac, Jordan Martinelli and Lucas Alves worked on a tattered cattle chute from a West Marin ranch, removing rust, patching up holes in the metalwork and trying to unstick the gates. Clad in protective goggles and work boots, they used a blowtorch and a crowbar to loosen the joints.
Asked about his fabrication goals, Lucas replied: “Learning how to build something out of nothing, how to use whatever resources are lying around so you don’t have to spend money and break the bank on something you don’t need to.”
He’s building a smoker out of an old oil barrel he found in the parking lot outside of the shop. “I’m cutting the legs tomorrow, and I’ll build a rack out of those metal rods over there,” he said, gesturing toward a rack across the room.
When it’s done, he’ll sell it.
While some shop students count their fabrication projects toward their F.F.A. degrees, most earn them by raising livestock, with cows generally being the creatures of choice.
Makayla Brasil, a Valley Ford resident, coaches the program’s livestock judging team and said she’s impressed with the program. “It just continues to grow and to thrive,” she said.
Ms. Brasil, an expert with an eye for the glamorous stars of the bovine runway, grew up on a Central Valley dairy and is married to someone who artificially inseminates dairy cows for a living. Needless to say, she knows a thing or two about what constitutes a desirable udder—knowledge that her F.A.A. charges are eager to milk.
“When you’re showing a cow, the udder is very, very important,” she said. “You’re looking for what we would call ‘bloom’—an udder that’s going to be wide and voluptuous, for lack of a better word, but that’s also going to be functional.”
Unlike the market livestock, the breeding animals raised by students are generally not for sale. They are for showing off. Students spend several hours a day—every day—feeding, training and grooming them to be the best beasts they can be. Before a show, they even style their hair and spray them with product to give them the requisite sheen.
At the county fairs where prizes are won, students are subjected to scrutiny along with their livestock. How much control do they have over their animal? How adept are they with handling the halters used to guide a cow and show off its posture to the best advantage?
“As a showman, you need to look a certain way that shows you’re there to win,” Ms. Brasil said. “You need to have good eye contact with the judge, and you need to demonstrate poise and posture.”
Such skills were mastered by Megan Donaldson, a former California Dairy Princess who served as the Tomales F.A.A. chapter president for two years before Colten took over. She’s shown heifers named Diamond, Pika and Sol, all of them raised to produce organic milk. Sol, who was her favorite, won the title of Reserve Grand Supreme at the Sonoma County Fair.
Like all three of this year’s American Degree recipients, Ms. Donaldson is now studying agriculture at Chico State, as her mother and Ms. Murphy did before her. To complete the degree requirements, students must finish a year of post-graduate education to demonstrate their ongoing commitment.
In October, Ms. Murphy accompanied Megan and the other two recipients to an awards ceremony in the stadium where the Indianapolis Colts play their N.F.L. games. There were 7,000 people in attendance, including representatives of ag companies and universities looking to recruit talent.
The degree recipients donned their F.A.A. blazers before going onstage to pick up their degrees.
“They give you a little pin to put on your corduroy jacket and a certificate and a little plaque with your name on it,” Megan said.
A lot of the students end up with scholarships because of the degree, but the ceremony is not about the money. “It’s more about receiving recognition of your hard work,” she said.