Brewster BBQ, breakfast and Green Hand Day mark FFA Week

By Mike Maltais

Staff writer

BREWSTER - As they do every year, Brewster High School's FFA students host a variety of events to bring FFA Week to the attention of the school and community in general and prospective new chapter members.

FFA adviser Todd Dezellem said his group will host an ice cream social on Thursday, Feb. 23 but that's just the beginning. Green Hand Day and the annual barbeque will fill up Friday, Feb. 24.

In the Green Hand tradition, new freshman FFA students dip their hands in green paint and put their handprints on a wall. Dezellem said he will also ask the 2016-17 senior FFA members to sign the wall as well.

FFA Week will lap over to Monday, Feb. 27, when the chapter hosts breakfast.

Dezellem, in his sixth year as Brewster's Ag instructor said he "always has a large class of students" for his projects.

Dezellem makes it interesting for his charges by offering a variety of interests from the popular Plant Science that starts all its flowers from seed for the group's annual plant sale in the third week of April.

Dezellem also offers a floral subscription service to local citizens who receive two arrangements a month from January through June. Dezellem said he usually has more than two dozen students who each create two floral arrangements per month and deliver the finished pieces to their customers.

The wood shop builds species-specific bird houses designed to accommodate bird varieties like wrens or bluebirds and are constructed so that the young have easy egress from the nest when the time comes to leave.

"In the past, we built houses for wood ducks and kestrel falcons that were installed above Chief Joseph Dam," Dezellem said. "The utility supplied the lumber and we built the houses."