The Montgomery Area School District Future Farmers of America brought home two top honors from the recent Pennsylvania Farm Show for their restoration of a Farmall A tractor.

This was the first time the club submitted an exhibit since it was chartered in January 2020, though the club has attended the agriculture career expo for the past five years.

The expo features around 60 employers from various agriculture-related fields, including agribusiness, animal science, agriculture production, mechanics and many more.

The Farmall A restored for the farm show was acquired by the district at an equipment dispersal sale at the county farm in August.

Records show the tractor was originally purchased by the county on Jan. 1, 1945, the first to be purchased for the county farm for around $750. Though the club originally planned to purchase the tractor, with a winning bid of $900, the farm ultimately decided to donate it to the school.

They thought it would be a good community outreach project,” said club advisor, Christopher Ulrich, who teaches technology education and agriculture at the high school.

Forgoing the normal progression of the agriculture mechanics class, which typically starts with small gas engine repair, the students decided to focus their efforts on restoring the tractor in order to have it ready for the farm show.

“That freed up 27 different kids that had their hands on helping out with the tractor restoration,” Ulrich said, adding that the project “took on a life of its own.”

All costs associated with the restoration were covered through the club’s funds, which were a mix of donations and fundraisers held by its members.

In October of last year, Ulrich made contact with Larry Beach, whose family operated the farm from 1946 until last year. Beach provided a wealth of information, including a history of the farm and photos from over the years.

“We put almost as much work into the history of the county farm as we did restoring the tractor,” Ulrich said, adding that a display of their research will be on display along with the tractor at this year’s Hughesville Fair.

For their efforts, the club won top billing for “Most Authentic Ag-Ed Antique Tractor Restoration” and “Best Video Ag-Ed Antique Tractor Restoration.”

“We were trying to restore the tractor to look like it did in 1945 when it was purchased, so we felt pretty good about that. And we had another team of students that took a lot of pictures as we were doing the restoration. We had a drone, and we used that as part of a video that we made showing the part antique tractors did in their day,” Ulrich said.

Though the project was a full-on group effort, the organization suggests that only three students participate in the presentation. Those chosen from Montgomery were: Hailey Bitler, Madison Price and Weston Taylor.

Prior to the farm show, the three student presenters held a mock presentation in front of teachers and fellow students, drawing from constructive criticisms to make improvements.

“It was like light and day. They really did take down that whole experience and made it a lot better. “For each of those kids, it was probably the largest speaking engagement they’ve had, and I think some of them kind of found their niche,” Ulrich said.

The club’s confidence was boosted after watching the presentations of their competitors, he said.

“We quickly realized that our project was probably one of the only ones that was exclusively done from start to finish at school. With most of the other ones, there was some kind of an interested third party, and a lot of the work got done not at school, but at somebody’s farm shop,” he added.

“We thought maybe we might win for the best presentation, too, but we were one of only two schools that won two awards, so it would have been pretty hoggish to win more,” Ulrich said with a laugh.

One of the highlights of the experience for Ulrich was the selfless manner in which the students participated.

“They get no personal gain out of this project at all. Technically, it can almost be considered community service hours, because this is a community service piece for the county farm and Lycoming county itself,” he said.

“Really the benefit they get is just all the publicity and recognition, nothing else. That’s a tough sell sometimes for kids, but they jumped right into it,” Ulrich said.

The community has been hugely supportive. There were a lot of donations made to us to do this project,” he said.

Additionally, the club will be doing a light restoration of another Farm All tractor donated by an FFA alumni family member to be auctioned off, with all proceeds going to the club’s funds.

Community service is something also strongly engrained in the club, with plans to collect food items to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House in March as part of the Farmers Care event. Similarly, just before Christmas, they held a food drive benefitting Footprints of Montgomery, and we delivered that right before Christmas with additional activities planned to benefit the Williamsport Salvation Army and the NorthCentral PA Food Bank.

In the wake of their victories, the club is gearing up for a spaghetti dinner fundraiser to be held at the Oak Grove Community Center on Feb. 28 and a cornhole tournament at the MAAC to raise funds on May 17.

The club will next head to the Northern Region Public Speaking LDEs, Tractor Driving CDE regional to be held at Pennsylvania College of Technology on April 21.

Taylor recently took first in Area Tractor Driving CDE, qualifying for the event, Ulrich said, adding that they hope to have more qualifiers as the competition draws nearer.

Still, Ulrich and his students have also begun thinking of future competitions.

“It’s going to be hard to top the history of what we had this time. Could we get one that’s in a worse state of disrepair, and bring it all the way back? I think we’re probably able to go to the next level next time. But who knows, we’ll see what the kids want to do,” he said.