By Morgan Wurm
On Thursday, Sept. 12, the members of Business Management class of Buckeye Central FFA Chapter traveled to Camp Michael to compete in the District 2 forestry contest.
Members of the team consisted of seniors, Jessica Cramer, Adam McGinnis, Amy Rietschlin, Sam Robertson, Matt Sheibley, and Morgan Wurm. Juniors, Paul Heydinger, Peter Keller, Seth Ollis, Cole Stacklin, Ray Stahl and Austin Wurm and sophomore Megan McGinnis.
The team competed against other schools in our district including Colonel Crawford, Wynford, Plymouth, South Central, New London and Plymouth.
The BC FFA team placed second out of six and also had Rietschlin placing 4th overall individual.
At the contest the team tested their skills on four areas of their forestry knowledge.
The first hour of the contest was a learning portion where the students broke down into groups and studied more in depth on any areas they need help with including general forestry, tree identification, parts of a chainsaw, and timber cruising.
The general forestry section was a session that took the students into the woods and learned which trees grow where and why they have the growth behaviors and patterns that they do.
The tree identification portion took the students back into the woods and they learned the specific markings of the trees, the different types of bark and which leaves are from a certain tree.
The chainsaw portion showed the students all the parts of a chainsaw, how the chainsaw works, the proper gear to wear when operating a chainsaw and all of the special safety features of a chainsaw. A short presentation was given by a representative of STIHL Chainsaws came to show the members everything they needed to know.
The timber cruising portion was conducted in the woods as well. The objective of this station was to see how many board feet a person could get from that tree. The task at hand was to find the diameter of the tree at breast height, and then see how tall the tree was to figure approximately how many board feet a person could get that was usable.
“I am very happy with how we placed as a team,” Cramer said. “All of the time we spent in class studying forestry really showed at the contest.”
The BC FFA will be back in action on Thursday, Sept. 19 as they travel to Colonel Crawford School District to compete in the Crawford County soil judging contest.