Every year in October, Righetti High School FFA holds its annual Kinder Patch on campus. Kindergarten students and teachers from the local Santa Maria and Orcutt districts attend the event that the Righetti FFA students plan. This year marked more than 20 years that the Righetti Ag Department has hosted this event.
Guillermo Guerra, ag teacher at Righetti said in a press release that, “Each year the event has gotten bigger and better.” More than 300 FFA members helped put on the event on Friday, Oct. 28.
In July after the Santa Barbara County Fair, Miguel Guerra, and a dozen FFA members planted more than 1,500 pumpkins on a half-acre parcel of land in preparation for this event. After caring for the pumpkin plants all summer and into fall, those same students along with some freshman were involved in harvesting the pumpkins a week before the event. The kindergarteners who attended the Kinder Patch were able to “pick” their pumpkin, decorate it, and take it home.
In a press release, Gilbert Muñoz, Righetti FFA chapter president, said, “One of my favorite times of the year is seeing all the kids running around and enjoying all the hard work we spent on this Kinder Patch. It really makes all the effort worth it, and it’s a tradition we look forward to every year.”
This year more than 600 kids attended the kinder patch, along with 30 chaperones despite the rainy weather conditions. There were more than a dozen stations that included: pumpkin picking, pumpkin painting, face painting, cookie decorating, stick horse racing, roping, bean bag toss, photo booth, transplanting, coloring, tractor pulling, a petting zoo, and much more. The Kinder Patch is one of the most popular events Righetti FFA puts on that welcomes the community.
This article appears in Nov 10-17, 2016.
