Off-Farm Income

There is a lot of fruit to pick (pun intended) from today's interview with Jada Rubalcava, and I picked the one that stood out the most to me for the title of this episode.

Jada has a unique set of experiences compared to the other students at Gothenburg High School and in her FFA chapter.  When she was in elementary school her father joined the military while pursuing a career as an anesthesiologist.  This caused Jada and her family to move from her childhood home of Phoenix, Arizona to several other cities and ultimately the small town of Gothenburg.  So, Jada has seen big city life, and she has seen small town life.

Jada is of the opinion that she has many more opportunities being in a small town and small school, which is not the way a lot of people look at this comparison.  However, whichever extra-curricular activity that she wants to participate in she has been able to.  This has to do with the size of her school and the fact that there are not so many students going out for a particular activity that people have to be cut.  Jada used golf as an example. She joined the golf team her freshman year, and when she joined she had never held a club before.  She correctly states that if she were still in Phoenix, she could never make the team under these circumstances and would have missed this particular opportunity.

Another opportunity that Jada has taken full advantage of is the sense of community in her small town and the way that the town respects and supports the FFA.  Based on an idea of some of her friends that she knew when living in Ohio, when it came time for her to being her supervised agricultural experience she decided to make and sell caramel apples.  When people caught wind of what she was doing, word spread like wildfire.  Soon, she was very busy and was even shipping her caramel apples to people.

 

Direct download: Off_Farm_Income--Episode_1339_Jada_Rubalcava-COMM_10_37-030222.mp3
Category:FFA -- posted at: 12:30am MDT