Student ingenuity, teamwork on display in wetland boardwalk project

426

By Benjamin Logan FFA Officer Lylli Kelley

The Benjamin Logan FFA Chapter created a beautiful wetland boardwalk for the school farm located at the Benjamin Logan School District.

The FFA members recently took on this laborious task in order to create a safer and more pleasant environment for themselves and the younger generations that will follow them.

Ag Capstone students planned, outlined, and designed the wetland boardwalk and then every current member in an Agricultural course helped to carry out the task before school, during class and after school.

Community members, representing Alexander Concrete, also donated their time to help dig holes that were used as the base for the boardwalk.

The FFA members enjoyed getting to work outside while completing their goal — to restore the Benjamin Logan School District Wetlands back to a usable, effective and clean condition.

The short term objectives that the students needed to accomplish in order to reach the overall objective were to rebuild the boardwalk, replace plates in the water retention system, and cut overgrown branches and maintain safety. The students accomplished these goals by working to build the dock as a team, listening to each other’s ideas and solutions to the presented problems, weed eating around the dock and installing new retention systems for the wetland.

These objectives taught students many hard and soft skills, including working as a team, problem solving, tool management and usage, and how to properly use a retention system in a wetland. These skills will later help students receive jobs throughout the agriculture industry and in other industries as well.

Funding for the project was provided in part by the Logan County Farm Bureau Impact Fund.


Students work on the wetland boardwalk project, located at Benjamin Logan’s school farm. (Benjamin Logan PHOTO)