This Week is National FFA Week: Auburndale Students Discuss Their FFA Program
Monday, February 23rd, 2026 -- 2:00 PM
This Week is National FFA Week.
Our own Dale Erickson had the opportunity to speak with FFA students and advisors from our area school districts including the Auburndale FFA.
National FFA Week runs through February 28th.
(AI assisted transcription by Otter.ai)
Dale: "The Auburndale FFA is celebrating FFA week. I am joined by Corbin Nicolai, and he is going to tell us about the FFA Week activities at Auburndale schools."
Corbin: "This upcoming Friday, we're doing donut delivery for farmer appreciation. And Monday we're doing boots and buckles for ice cream sandwich. Tuesday is Hawaiian day. Wednesday is Pink Out. Thursday is crazy socks, and then Friday is blue and gold day."
Dale: "Can you tell me a little bit about some of the other things that your FFA chapter does throughout the year that is involved with the community, not just your school?"
Corbin: "Couple of big things we do throughout the year are sunflowers. We have them out by our school forest just down the road from the high school. We have a lot of people come out like to take pictures there. Other big thing is our pumpkin glow in October. A lot of people like to come out for that and visit that."
Dale: "And we're also over here for the dairy breakfast as well."
Corbin: "Our dairy breakfast is pretty big. Most of the time we have drive through and sit down potato pancakes and regular pancakes."
Dale: "The FFA prides itself in giving its members an opportunity to grow as leaders. I had an opportunity to talk to Brenna Thiel, who is the president of the Auburndale FFA, and asked her how FFA helps her grow as a person."
Brenna: "How FFA has helped me grow as a person would have to be getting me out of my comfort zone, you know, stepping out of that box, competing in different LEDs. I've competed in discussion, meet, prepared speaking. I'm hoping to do the job interview next year."
"It's made me just kind of find different things that you don't get, you know, growing up in my family dairy farms, you know, getting me off the farm to advance in different skills, I guess, like as in, I said, public speaking, it's made my worth ethic definitely increase. I've learned how important is to not race to take your time on things, especially in the community, because the community really enjoys what the FFA does."
Dale: "In the chapter here at Auburndale, lots of things going on. You do have a lot of interaction with not only your students here at the school, but also with your community. Can you tell us some of the things that your FFA does to get its vision out into the community?"
Brenna: "Yeah, so we're really, really fortunate to have our school forest right down the road from our high school and we do a lot in the school forest. I mean, we have the resource. We might as well put things into it."
"So, one of our huge things that we have is our pumpkin glow and we carve a little over, I'd say 700 pumpkins line the trails up with the pumpkins and put lights in them for all the community. I mean, we've had over, I think the number this year was over, a little over 4000 people."
"The donations towards that go to the Toys for Tots Foundation, where, again, we're helping the community be able to put toys under the Christmas tree for Christmas. Some other stuff that we do in the school forest would be our sunflower field. The sunflower field is two acres."
"Then we've planted Zinnias around to kind of add a little bit more color. It's really unique to see the different kind of people you get out there. Some of them are just taking a walk through the sunflowers to brighten their day. Some are celebrating their 50th anniversary or taking senior pictures. So it's really cool to see our work be enjoyed by the community."
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.