Remember that old question, “Where’s the beef?” Students in Hagerstown, Indiana, have the answer: “Out back.”
Just outside the ag classroom at Hagerstown Junior-Senior High is a corral containing seven beef cows.
The cattle also answer another age-old question: “What’s for lunch?”
Ag students are raising the animals as part of a comprehensive program that not only provides a hands-on learning experience in the school’s classrooms but will feed students in the entire school district and save the cafeteria about $2,000 a year.
Ag teacher Nathan Williamson proposed the idea to superintendent William Doering last February after Doering asked for cost-cutting ideas from the entire staff.
“Nathan Williamson brought in a fact sheet and list of positives and potential negatives for the program.
He said we can make the corporation some money, and beyond that, it would be good for the kids. I couldn’t help but say yes,” Doering says.
The idea came up a few years ago when the school’s maintenance supervisor, Gerry Hillman, and Williamson were brainstorming about it.
The superintendent at the time wasn’t interested, so Hillman and Williamson just tucked the idea away.
When Doering needed ideas for saving the district some money, Williamson brought it up again.
Once school started this fall, the kids began getting an area ready for the animals. The community jumped in to help.
One local business helped clear the land. Another donated fence poles. Yet another sold the students supplies at a discount.
The local butcher has offered to process the animals for free. Area businesses and community members have donated money to help buy the cattle and other supplies.
Each morning this fall, in Williamson’s mechanics class, students stretched wire and built fence.
The crossbred beef calves arrived early this month, and students will be responsible for the care and feeding of the animals.
The students in other ag classes were already raising grain and corn on the school’s test plots. Williamson says those crops will be used for feed.
“The cows will get grain from the test plots, and our local cooperative elevator is going to store, mill the grain and add supplement free of charge.
Roughage will come from stockpiled fescue grazing as well as corn stalks baled off the test plot,” Williamson says.
This year, they’ll bring in seven 700-pound calves because they’re getting a late start.
Williamson says they plan to start with 10 500-pound calves next year. Williamson says they plan to buy the cows each August and butcher each May.
The cafeteria will buy the animals for butcher this summer and use the beef to feed all of the 1,100 students in the Nettle Creek School Corporation.
Doering says the long-term goal was originally to get the elementary and middle-school kids involved in the project down the road, but staff members in those schools aren’t waiting around.
He says they’re already looking into bringing 4-H or an “ag in the classroom” type program into the schools, so the younger kids can be parts of the program too.
Hagerstown is a small town with a population of about 1,700, according to census numbers. It sits just east of Indianapolis in Wayne County.
While some of the kids in the district still live on farms, many of them are a generation or two removed from growing food, Doering says.
“This gives them a project they can all rally around. It’s been kind of a bridge-making.”
Senior Eli Reagan, 17, is one of those town kids who had never worked with animals until recently.
He helped build the fence and spent time with a local beef producer before the calves arrived so he could learn a little about caring for the animals.
He’s already enlisted in the U.S. Army and won’t get a bite of the burger he’s raising. That’s OK with him.
“It’s giving the other kids the opportunity to get better food,” Reagan says. “I had no idea how to dig post holes or stretch fence. Later, if I ever need to build a fence or help a neighbor, I’ll know what to do.”
Reagan’s classmate, Zach Utterbeck, 18, won’t get to enjoy the burgers of his labors either. He’s headed for tech school after graduation but says the experience with the project has already benefited him.
“It’s helped me learn how to work with and have a better relationship with others.”
Now that the cattle are in place, Doering says his job is to find some new equipment for the ag classroom to supplement the program.
An ag professor at Purdue University has offered to do workshops with the Hagerstown students, but the school doesn’t have the technology to make it happen.
Doering says he’s hoping he can track down the funding for a “smart-board” – a web-enabled interactive whiteboard – so the students can do distance learning with Purdue and other universities. 
Karma Fitzgerald is a freelance author based in Idaho.
PHOTOS
TOP: Jacob Loudy, left, and Matt Bennett, students at Hagerstown Junior-Senior High in Indiana, help align fences to be used for the school’s beef herd. Beef produced by the classes will be used for the students’ own consumption.
BOTTOM: Eli Reagan, right, and Zach Utterbeck dig post holes on their school’s planned acreage for beef cattle production. Photos by Beth Overfields.
