If you can recall back in school taking a field trip, you probably can remember that riding on a school bus is not the most pleasant way to travel. But it didn’t deter the sixty-three students and six staff members from the Delaware Area Career Center from making the long journey from their school to our farm sanctuary in Pickaway County.
This past fall, Cosmetology instructor, Roxanne Ames, and Environmental Science teacher, Lucinda Shurelds, began a small class fundraising project. After seeing an article in The Columbus Dispatch about our desperate need for hay, Shurelds and Ames decided to make our sanctuary their charity project for the year, and that small class project grew into a multi-county campaign.
First, the cosmetology lab and the science club held a bake sale and raised $250 to buy hay. When students from Industrial Diesel Mechanics, Equine Science, Landscape, Automotive Technologies and the Sophomore Construction Trades lab heard about the community service opportunity, they signed up to help. Members of the Future Farmers of America have continued to work on the project.
On a frigid 29-degree day, the students and their teachers worked together to repair fencing and fix-up the barn. Several students also transported hay donated by Equine instructor, Jo Sturgell. Another student donated three rabbit hutches. When mending the electric horse fence, students created a human fence to corral the horses. Shurelds collected cash donations from the DACC staff and delivered over 1500 pounds of feed donated by Tractor Supply Center and Champaign Feed Supply to the farm.
The good folks at the DACC have put together a video of the whole experience and have submitted it to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC. It would be a dream come true to have new barns for our animal residents. We would like to thank the students, staff, administrators, and the Superintendent at Delaware Area Career Center for their tremendous support of our sanctuary.
