Pateros FFA students learn through new project challenges

PATEROS – Everywhere one turns in the Pateros High School shop there are projects of one sort or another underway. And those are in addition to the community service work that instructor Lyle Blackburn’s FFA and Ag students take on.

The group recently completed a series of road marker signs delivered to the Alta Lake State Park that is still recovering from the 2014 Carlton Complex wildfire, the state’s second largest, that burned through the area. Prior to the road signs, the Pateros shop students took on a multi-year project to restore or rebuild all the picnic tables the park lost in the fire.

No challenge is too large for Blackburn’s class to take on as evidenced by a number of old tractors – classics actually – that the students restored. The latest project is a rare 1971 Ford short box pickup that received a new Chev 427 cubic-inch engine to replace the original 350 V-8 that was the stock powerplant. Still ahead is exterior restoration of the vehicle’s black paint job and other work.

Elsewhere in the woodworking department sits an upright piano partially stripped of its coating of light green paint. The students will restore the piece to its original wood finish for a local client. Another customer asked the woodworkers to convert a round oak dining table to a low-profile coffee table.

The Pateros FFA students are effective fundraisers with their barbecue grill a regular fixture at many of the community events in their town. The group also collects aluminum cans at recycle bins located in town and at nearby Alta Lake.