Bobbi Hanhardt, Bayfield High School agriculture teacher, has led youth livestock judging teams into the top 10 placings in the National Western Livestock Show, second place in the American Royal Livestock Show and a reserve placing in Colorado State National FFA Organization showing.

She credits the program with developing her public speaking and interpersonal skills and praises its ability to teach career leadership, personal growth and career success, and she says FFA inspired her to take up teaching.

FFA programs are bolstered by in-school agriculture classes, said Durango High School Principal Jonathan Hoerl. While Durango High School’s FFA program has persisted, its agriculture courses have been on hiatus since 2018 because of the lack of a teacher. Until this January, that is.

DHS’ Intro to Agriculture course made a return in January after a three-year hiatus. And who is leading it but none other than Hanhardt, who stepped in to teach the course. Florida Mesa Elementary School also joined the collaboration by providing classroom space for lab work as DHS continues its search for a full-time teacher.

Agriculture is a strong facet of La Plata County and the state, said Hanhardt, who feels good about the chance to serve DHS students in addition to her regulars in the Bayfield School District.

“Colorado is a leader in agriculture,” she said. “Sixty percent of the income that comes into the state of Colorado is from agriculture. A lot of the students in this area have family history and passion for agriculture and that is going to be their career path.”

Durango’s FFA program, led by Melinda Wood, has been going strong despite the yearslong lapse in regular agriculture courses, Hoerl said. But regular agriculture courses supplement those FFA activities, and the return of those courses will allow the high school to build back pathways to higher level ag studies.

Hoerl said the Intro to Agriculture class is a way for students to explore “all things ag.” When people think of FFA, he said, they probably tend to think of farming. But agriculture is so much more than that.

The Intro to Agriculture course tackles animal science, crop science, current legislation, the history of FFA and more. DHS will take feedback from current students in shaping what subjects follow-up courses will include, Hoerl said.

The weekly course schedule consists of four virtual learning periods with one in-person lab class hosted at Florida Mesa Elementary, Hanhardt said. She logs in from Bayfield during her planning period to conduct class and drives to the elementary school on Tuesdays to teach in-person.

Florida Mesa Elementary was chosen because it has the extra space for lab work, which consists of hands-on activities, as well as its middle distance between Bayfield and DHS, she said.

“(Florida Mesa Elementary) has given us the opportunity to meet partway,” she said. “So I can come to them and still make it back here for my regular courses.”

Hanhardt used the first day of class to explore students’ interests, she said. Her current group of students seem to be particularly interested in wildlife management. One example of the subject her students are exploring is the reintroduction of wolves to Colorado.

“It’s a hot-button issue for this part of the country, especially,” she said. “But most of what we’ve been talking about has been the natural migration of wolves from Wyoming into northern Colorado up around Craig and that area.”

Students are learning about the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s preparations for the reintroduction of wolves. She said she hasn’t explored the political side of wolf reintroduction as much as management techniques used by ranchers who are actively dealing with the presence of the predatory species.

The class is looking at methods of deterrence used by ranchers in Wyoming and Montana. One method involves an electric fence with large flags attached to it that wave loudly in the wind. The flapping flags are noisy and serve to scare wolves away from the area, with the electric fences serving as an extra layer of deterrence.

Another method is the “propane boomer cannon” – a mechanism that produces a loud bang every so often that is intended to scare wolves away.

In another recent lesson, Hanhardt’s students created their own livestock brands out of wire. The students then dipped their creations in paint and pressed them onto paper to get an idea of what their brand would look like in print.

Students are currently developing business plans for their own imagined farming or ranching business, Hanhardt said. If they were given a stack of money, how would they use it to develop their businesses?

Hanhardt said Florida Mesa Elementary was generous and welcoming for allowing her and DHS to use classroom space for lab work.

“They’ve ironed out transportation, they got permissions,” she said. “There was a lot of steps to make this happen for Durango High School students.”

She said teaching the Intro to Agriculture course is a bit more work, but as long as students are willing to learn, she’s happy to help.

“Honestly, the students have been fantastic,” she said. “They are a great group of kids who really do have a passion to learn about agriculture.”

Hanhardt’s favorite ag topic is animal science. But she also loves horticulture, she said.

“I really just think that I’m so happy we have been able to put this together,” she said.

As for the future of agriculture at DHS, Hoerl said the job search for a permanent teacher is nationwide. Animal, crops and plant sciences are likely to be big subjects in future courses.

“Obviously, ranching and farming is a big aspect of our community here in La Plata County,” he said. “Those are the things that we’ll want to get student input on and see if we can generally match the overall consensus of what they’d like to continue to explore.”

The plan is to have a full-time agriculture teacher at DHS in time for the 2022-23 school year. The high school will survey students in the next couple of weeks about the direction of future classes and then the hiring process to find the right match will begin after spring break, Hoerl said.

“This is truly a kind of herculean effort between Bayfield, Durango and then also our elementary schools to open the doors and provide opportunities for our kids that were greatly needed,” he said.

cburney@durangoherald.com