Fire up the grill! May is National Barbecue Month. Members of the Paso Robles FFA Chapter in Paso Robles, Calif., do barbecue big. In 2021, they welded 16 barbecue pits and auctioned them to raise money for a good cause in their community.
Paso Robles FFA members have been welding grills and barbecue pits since 2016, when a team of members competed at a Las Vegas welding competition called Welding Thunder.
“My student team built a double grill barbecue in 15 hours and won the high school division that year,” says Justin Pickard, welding teacher and FFA advisor at Paso Robles High School. “To prepare for the competition, we established Bearcat BBQ Company.”
Since 2016, Paso Robles FFA members have built a variety of barbecue pit styles ranging from small portable versions to trailers valued at more than $10,000.
Due to their hybrid learning schedule during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, students did not have enough time to plan and weld individual projects. As a solution, they worked as a team to collectively design, fabricate and produce barbecue pits they could sell and then donate proceeds back to their community.
“The biggest challenge was the time restraint. We only had welding class for three hours a week and often used our personal time to come in and work,” says Samantha Buie, a Paso Robles FFA member who co-led the project. “We even had to continue the project through summer to meet our goals.”
In total, 28 students in four welding classes worked on the barbecue pits in a production manufacturing process.
Paso Robles FFA members welded barbecue pits to be auctioned off. All proceeds were donated to the James W. Brabeck Youth Legacy Fund, which supports youth in agriculture.
“We made 16 barbecue pits: 15 were built by students, and one was my guide for them to follow along with,” Pickard says. “The guide pit was donated to the local chapter of the American Cancer Society for their fundraiser dinner in the fall of 2021.”
The other 15 barbecue pits were auctioned off at the Industrial Education Auction. Paso Robles FFA raised more than $32,000 to donate to the James W. Brabeck Youth Legacy Fund, which supports youth in agriculture. The proceeds purchased animals for youth to exhibit and then sell at the local Junior Livestock Auction. Those animals were later processed and donated as protein to the San Luis Obispo County Food Bank.
“The auction far exceeded our expectations,” Pickard says. “As the price for each barbecue kept going higher and higher, there was such amazing energy in the arena. We were grateful to be able to make such a positive impact on our community.”
Paso Robles FFA member Clayton Melendy, who co-led the project, says even if a goal seems unattainable at first, hard work and persistence can make a difference in your community.
“At the beginning of this project, we estimated an outcome of about $5,000 to donate to the James W. Brabeck Youth Legacy Fund,” Melendy says. “We were astounded by the support from our community. Our biggest lesson from this project was that even though we have the ability to make projects to sell that profit ourselves, we found much more value in using our skills to support our community.”
