At Colquitt County High School in Georgia, 11th-grade student and FFA member Emily Thompson is growing her Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) in the nursery operations division.
“All my life, I have been raised on my family’s farm, where agriculture has been our priority,” Thompson says. “Our family has now been in the agriculture industry for seven generations. My SAE began when I found a passion for planting seeds for my dad such as ferns, okra, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, watermelons and onions.”
Through growing her SAE, Thompson has faced many challenges and taken on multiple extra responsibilities that not many high school students normally would. One of these challenges is the damage to some greenhouses that led to a need to construct new ones.
“A hail storm destroyed the roof of my family-owned greenhouse in May 2023,” she says. “The hail was the size of golf balls and broke the polycarbonate roofing into thousands of small pieces, rendering the greenhouse unusable.”
As a result, this led to the construction of a new 30×50-foot greenhouse the following December.
Some of the responsibilities Thompson has taken on include spraying and mowing around the greenhouse monthly. She also has to fertilize as needed and water the plants every day.
In her greenhouse, Thompson grows a variety of ornamental flowers, vegetable plants and ferns. This is her fifth year doing this SAE, and each year she buys her seeds from local businesses like Hoss Tools and Clifton Seed Company.
