By Khalida Sarwari
The Westmont Farm is open for business this month for a plant sale the Campbell Future Farmers of America Boosters Club is holding to raise money for the agricultural science program at Westmont High School.
Every Saturday this month, students in the program will sell 4-inch pots for $2 each. The plants inside the pots are for heirloom tomatoes, peppers, squash, herbs and eggplants that were planted by students and parents and raised in a greenhouse on the farm, said Shirden Flanders, president of the FFA Boosters Club.
“The plant sale is a way of getting additional funding to help kids pay for animal feeds and bedding supplies,” he said.
Proceeds from the plant sale will help support Westmont’s agricultural science program, a series of classes that focus on farming and agriculture. Currently 170 students are enrolled in the program, said Flanders.
Any student who takes one of the classes to fulfill a science requirement is automatically a member of the Campbell chapter of the FFA, a national youth organization based in middle and high school classes that promote and support agricultural education.
Westmont “is the only school that offers an agricultural science program in Silicon Valley,” Flanders said.
As part of the program, the students maintain the school farm and raise animals, which they take every summer to the Santa Clara County Fair for competitions. After that, the animals are auctioned off to buyers at the fair. The animals are usually steers, goats, lambs, pigs, chickens and ducks, and they typically come from breeders in California but are sometimes from out of state.
The plant sale is held Saturdays in April from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Westmont Farm, across from the Westmont baseball field.
The sale will culminate on May 5 with the Farm Fun Fest, an event that will be open to the community and will feature a petting zoo and face-painting, among other activities.
