Schrowang ‘pops’ in on an FFA experience

STANDARD — Some students try to hide from business courses in high school. Brian Schrowang has embraced business in a different kind of way through his real life experiences in the Putnam County High School (PCHS) Future Farmers of America (FFA) program.

Schrowang is participating in the FFA Supervised Agricultural Experience or SAE. In this project, members keep a record book with information on their experiences in one of two different areas, according to the PCHS FFA sponsor John Heiser.

“They can either do a placement record book where they work for somebody. Or they can do an entrepreneur record book where they run their own business,” Heiser said. “Brian’s is an entrepreneur record book. It will be a crop book, and his, for popcorn, will be a specialty crop.”

Popcorn will be the specialty area in which Schrowang will be competing in. He will first compete at a section level. If he wins that, he moves onto district competition and then possibly state, according to Heiser.

These types of projects, Heiser said, help train students for something they might want to do later in life. The record book, in Schrowang’s case, teaches problem-solving skills, responsibility for a product and record-keeping skills. In section competition, the students will also be interviewed on their respective projects.

Schrowang, who is currently in his third year of FFA, holds the office of treasurer. He comes from a multi-generational family who farms, and he thought the project was a natural fit.

“I’ve always had an interest in farming. When we were tossing around ideas of what I could do this year, we came across the idea of sweet corn or popcorn. That sparked my curiosity right there,” Schrowang said. “I thought that this might be something interesting to do as I didn’t know anyone that did that.”

Schrowang planted a half acre of popcorn. Several things have surprised him during the project.

“We have to do everything by hand. We don’t have any machines that will harvest the popcorn. It’s picking each ear off each stalk and putting it into a wagon type of work,” he said. “It’s amazing how clean you have to keep everything to keep a safe food operation. All your buckets have to be cleaned with hot boiling water. Keeping everything sterile is hard. It takes a lot of effort.”

He is selling his popcorn in one quart mason jars at home basketball games this winter. The junior class is also using the popcorn in their concession stand. He also sold a bigger bag, but found when it dropped, it broke pretty easily.

The record book Schrowang is keeping documents everything he has gone through in the course of the project. It details cost, work effort to plant the seed, harvesting and what he has done with the project so far.

Schrowang is the son of Greg and Julie Schrowang of Standard.