(intense country rock music) (intense country rock music fading) - I am a farmer, so the future of agriculture is important to me.

The future of agriculture is taught best by FFA teachers, advisors, all that to go on at the high school and college level.

And especially today, our guest is Alex Johannes from Highland.

How you doing, Alex?

- I'm good.

I'm good.

- Yeah.

- Happy to be here.

- You're from Highland.

Now where is it from Peoria?

- From Peoria, about two, two hours and 15 minutes.

- You're south, right?

- Yes, south.

- Okay.

Is that where you're from originally?

- I'm not.

I'm from outside of Nashville, Illinois.

I grew up on a farm.

My dad and grandpa raised cattle and grain crops and that's just been where I've been until I left to go to college and moved up there and, yeah.

- Well, when you were growing up on the farm, I mean, was it, were you out there underfoot pestering or did you have much to do with it?

- I was more of a watcher.

- Yeah.

- I am very much one to sit and observe.

I would see dad and grandpa making passes out in the field and I'd be glued to the window, you know, doing like the little kid look, just- - [Rob] Were you licking the window?

- No, the look.

- Were you one of those kids?

- Like actually looking, (Rob laughing) seeing what they were doing.

Very few times, I've actually been up with them in the combine or in the tractor.

There were some memories of me as a little kid sleeping in the bottom of a Gleaner combine.

(laughs) So- - Oh, a Gleaner.

- A Gleaner.

- [Rob] I'm surprised you didn't fall through the floor.

- Well, we love our Gleaner combines.

Those are now our like retired parts combines, because it's like Build-A-Bear, you know, you pick the parts out and put 'em in the new one to fix hopefully the problem with that and just hope for the best with it.

(laughs) - Not everybody gets the inside jokes of agriculture, but you have different combines, right?

You got the elite, which is a John Deere, and then you've got some other stuff in the middle, and then you've got the economy version, (Alex chuckling) the Gleaner.

So, Gleaner people are very proud of their combines because I feel like they feel like they have to be because they get, they get poked at, picked on a little bit.

- Yeah.

I mean Dad, Dad did upgrade a couple years ago to an actual nice, big John Deere combine.

A little bigger than those Gleaners that have seen a few years.

- Yeah.

- Seen a few harvests.

But I think he's happy to be rolling in that.

Doesn't really catch the butt of many Gleaner jokes anymore, but he loves it, so.

- Okay.

Your dad is the reason that you and I met.

- Yeah, yeah.

My dad loves your show.

Loves following you and Emily and seeing what you guys do.

- [Rob] Sounds like a good man.

- He is a good man.

- Yeah.

- He is so disappointed that he didn't get the chance to come up here and meet you.

He's always out on the farm.

He's always out driving his semis.

- Yeah.

- He's actually missing for a DOT physical and he was really, really hoping to reschedule, but again, with time constraints, trying to get in, reschedule, it just didn't work.

So anyway, this is my opportunity I guess.

Hi, Dad.

I'm on TV with The Shark Farmer.

(laughs) - He's not gonna answer, is he?

- No, probably not.

(laughs) No, I mean, he's a man of very few words when it comes to texting, but hopefully, he'll say something about this.

- Oh, I see.

Really?

You're just like, "Oh, hey, Dad, this is what I did today."

Does he give you just like- - I'll get a thumbs up.

- Does he do the emoji?

- Yeah, I get the thumbs up, I get the thumbs up emoji.

Sometimes I get exclamation points and those are fun.

- The only reason is because a phone probably gives that as an option to like, I don't have to do anything else.

- Yeah, if it's like a convenient button, he'll press it and he'll be just fine with it.

- All right, you went to U of I.

- I did, and I did actually bring you something.

- Fantastic.

- A little takeaway.

So again, on the farm you can never have too many multipurpose tools.

This is a bottle opener, a nail clipper, and a nail file, U of I branded.

- U of I, I like the bottle.

You cannot open a bottle with that.

See, this is what's wrong with University of Illinois.

- I'm sure it'll work just fine.

You gotta give it a try.

Unless you don't wanna try it because it has a U of I like black eye on it.

- No, I think we'll be all right.

Snail clipper.

- Yeah, that's a multipurpose tool.

- Shh.

- You can't do too much with it.

(nail clipper snips) - Let's do one more.

(Alex giggling) Shh.

(nail clipper snips) That's, it's satisfying.

- There ya go.

- They hate when I put stuff on the floor.

Yeah.

(Alex laughing) It's probably some HR violation right there or something like that.

Well thank you for this.

- Oh, you're welcome.

- University of Illinois.

- I hope you cherish it.

- You guys, you just wanna put that on everything, don't ya?

- Well.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, we do.

We're good at branding.

- [Rob] You actually bought this.

- My mom might've had a few trinkets from U of I sitting around, so.

(Rob chuckling) - Are you a U of I family?

- Well, I'm the only one that went to U of I. We've always, again known them for, well not necessarily sports.

We are not a sports school, but we are an ag school.

- They aren't even close.

- No, no.

Hopefully this year football will take off, but we'll see.

We'll see.

- No.

- I don't know, I don't know.

I've had some hope for basketball, but you know how that goes.

- [Rob] Nah, that's just never gonna happen, is it?

- No, probably not.

- What did you study there?

- Ag leadership, education, and communications.

- Ag leadership?

I didn't know that was, what do you learn there?

- Well, just the different types of leadership styles and you know, just how to apply that to your home and your community and going from there.

I mean, I was more of the education realm of it because obviously, that's what led me into teaching.

But I was for sure that I was gonna go into ag comm instead of education.

- That's a dumb major.

Ag Comm.

That's the stupidest thing.

Agriculture communications- - Yeah, you learn to talk a lot.

- Is the dumbest thing you could ever go into.

- Oh, you learn to talk a lot.

You learn to do sit down interviews and social media and- - There's no money in it.

(Alex chuckles) None.

- No.

- At all.

Not like teaching.

(laughs) - Oh, don't get me started.

I do love my job though and it pays off in the end, but that's more than just money.

- Well, before we get to that though, you were in FFA and 4-H as a kid?

- I was in 4-H for a couple years in high school.

I was a little late bloomer in that.

And then in high school, at the beginning, I joined FFA and didn't really know much about it.

I knew it was for ag kids.

Didn't really know where I was gonna find my footing.

And for my freshman year, I think there's a very, very short list of things that I didn't do.

- Oh really?

You went all out?

- I loved every minute of it.

That's what I lived and breathed.

I knew from my freshman year that I wanted to be an ag teacher.

- Oh really?

- Until I, you know, kind of grew up and I was like, "Oh,"- - [Rob] Was it because your teacher?

- Not necessarily.

- Oh, you didn't- - I enjoyed my ag class.

- You didn't like him?

- No, she was fine.

- Oh, you didn't like her?

- I enjoyed my ag classes and- - What was it about her you didn't like?

- (laughs) I don't know, we were just always busy doing a lot and- - Was it her style or just her personality?

- She was fine, so.

(cards tapping) - It's not what you say, it's what you don't say.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- No, like I had a good, good high school experience in FFA and like I said, that's kind of what led me to be here, doing all the ag ed things now.

- Yeah.

- I knew my freshman year I wanted to be an ag teacher and then I kind of dawdled off, towards those sophomore, junior, senior years where you're trying to be like, "Is this really what I wanna do?"

Then I was interested in Ag Communications because that's what my record book was in.

- Oh yeah.

- So really, really loved it.

And I'm like, "Okay, I'm still gonna go to school.

I'm still gonna go be an ag teacher," because you know, it's harder to go get your license, you know, in hindsight.

So if I'm in another job and I wanna go teach, I just wanted to get it out of the way while I could.

So, stayed in ag ed all four years and had a few good ag communications internships with Osborne Bar and a couple of other places.

- [Rob] What were you doing there?

- Content technology.

- Because everybody thinks, everybody thinks you're just gonna be on the radio and TV.

- No, I was behind the scenes working with social media.

So we had brands like Bayer- - Bayer.

- United Soybean Board.

- Never heard of 'em.

- Cattlemen's Hall of Fame on there.

- Oh.

- And like we helped kind of manage some of their social media so I did all the backend work and I tagged like every interaction that they had, if it was positive, it was negative, it was neutral, if it was related to an event.

- The social media, most of it was probably negative.

- There were some things, like there are some political shifts and you know, that's always changing a little bit.

So sometimes that's- - [Rob] Always those political shifts.

- You know, what you have to kind of look out for and learn to manage.

- Well before we get into your teaching now, what do we got here?

- This is Piggy.

- It's Piggy.

- This is Piggy.

Piggy is my now 24-year-old stuffed animal.

- Oh.

- Piggy has been with me since about day two.

- Oh.

- Yeah.

He's a little feeble, be nice to him.

(laughs) But Piggy has been with me through every single life event, literally since birth.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- He's been to like college graduation.

He's on TV now.

He's been to daycare.

Piggy had a field trip, Piggy had a field trip to daycare, and when Piggy got lost, that was when everything broke loose because, you know, piggy was missing and- - Did you lose it?

- Piggy was left in the backyard.

I don't know how Pig- - I'm not talking about Piggy right now.

When Piggy was gone, did you?

- Yeah.

- Did you lose it?

- Oh yeah.

- Did you lose your stuff?

- Oh, I lost it, and I think my parents did too because I was distraught that this pig was nowhere to be seen.

- Did they meet the other Alex?

- I think so, I think so.

(Rob chuckling) And again, it was in the younger age and not that I was a horrible kid, but you know how little kids when they're so attached to something and they lose it?

Yeah, like I- - Yeah.

- Mm hm.

Piggy was the thing that I always had and Piggy's kinda like why I'm here.

I mean, it's a pig.

You see 'em out on the farm.

I always knew that we had farm connections and I'm like, "This ag is always an evolving industry that I'm gonna stay in."

And I feel like, you know, it's just fitting that since day two, I had a pig.

- [Rob] Okay.

- And that's how Piggy came to be.

- His rate of gain maybe is a little, he's a little slim.

- He might've lost a little stuffing and a weight.

(laughs) Like I said, piggy went everywhere, so.

- I don't want to belabor this, but I need to know.

So when you lost Piggy, at daycare, where, where did Piggy go?

- Like I said Piggy, they found Piggy in the backyard.

How Piggy got out in the backyard, I have no idea.

- [Rob] Was it a rival of yours that?

- Well, I don't know.

Us kids that were there at that daycare, a lot of us were in a group, pretty, pretty close in age.

- Yeah.

- I don't know.

I honestly probably could have brought Piggy out there and just dropped Piggy, but again- - No, you have an assumption though.

What's her name?

- I don't know.

- What's her name?

The one you think that took Piggy?

- Oh, I don't know.

- What is her name?

- I had friends named Neil and Lane that were in daycare.

- Neil and Lane.

- Yeah, so you never know.

They always messed with me a little bit because I was like the one girl in the game.

- Neil and Lane.

What's their last names?

- I don't know.

- Where do they live?

- Should I call 'em out?

Well, they're from Nashville.

I actually went to high school with them, so we grew up together.

- Neil and Lane from Asheville.

- Yeah.

(laughs) But yeah, so I don't know.

I don't know who took Piggy.

Like I said, I think Piggy is- - I'm thinking Neil and Lane did, from Asheville.

- I don't know.

But yeah, Piggy's been on a few adventures.

- What's with the pictures?

- Well, this is kind of the development of Piggy.

So, yeah, the little kid picture that was about three.

Piggy kind of looks the same.

Piggy looks a little fluffier then.

So he might have not- - That's the same- - That is the same pig.

(both chuckling) That is the same pig.

- Okay.

- He might have not lost any of his fluff, but- - Look how cute you are.

- Yeah, that was at age three.

Mom says that that was like the terror years.

- The terror- - Usually there's the terrible twos.

- You had the terrible threes.

- I was the terrible threes.

Mom swears that the day I turned four- - Well, she's one who put you on wicker furniture.

- Well.

- Yeah.

- I mean.

- Okay, and then?

- It still lives in my mom and dad's house.

They love it, so.

- The picture or the pig?

- Well, the picture.

You know, Piggy had to travel with me and that's- - Absolutely.

(Alex laughs) - That's my senior picture.

Again, Piggy's been through it all, so might- - He's still looking good.

- Yeah, he's still looking good.

He's had a few minor stitch-ups, you know, as a childhood stuffed animal does.

- You can have that thing professionally, remember that "Toy Story" where they had him like redone.

- I know, but I'm not about to leave him at Al's Toy Barn.

- Okay.

- He doesn't belong there.

- All right.

Well, I'm glad you have some codependent issues.

- I mean, he lives in the sock drawer.

- What happened if you would, if you would lose it now?

Would you freak out?

- I, again, in my adult self, probably not freak out, but probably be a little concerned that, you know, like my little best buddy always went with me.

- Do we have a waste basket?

- No!

(laughs) - No, I'm trying to help.

- Not for Piggy.

(laughs) - I'm trying to help you.

- No!

- [Rob] No, I'm trying to help you move on.

Do we have one?

- (laughs) God.

- Maybe a shredder.

Do we have a shredder?

- That's sad.

- PBS doesn't have anything.

All right.

But would you like to throw it away?

- No.

- Here on TV?

- I'd like to not, but I'd like Piggy to return home.

- [Rob] Okay.

- He's been through everything.

- We'll leave it at that.

- I expect him to go through the rest of everything else.

- Moving on.

(Alex giggling) How did you get hired as an ag teacher slash FFA advisor?

- Well, you know, went through the schooling at U of I and got put in my placement at- - [Rob] It works every time.

Yeah.

- I got put in my placement my senior year at Du Quoin High School.

So, you know, real Southern Illinois.

- Is that how you say it?

Du Quoin?

- Du Quoin.

- I'd have said Decoin.

- Du Quoin.

(indistinct).

- Irregardless, yeah.

- No, so I actually got paired with two of the best cooperating teachers that I could ask for and they were great with preparing me to go in the classroom.

And like I said, I was kind of in that stumble where it's like, you know, I had a nice internship with Ag Communications and I really liked what I did there, but I also still kind of teetered because it's like, I don't think I could work an office job.

I wanted something that had variety.

I knew it just wasn't my calling.

- Yeah.

- In Ag communications.

And from day one when I stepped in the classroom with Ann and Sarah, I kind of looked- - With who?

- Ann Petrowski and Sara McKennis, my- - Oh, I thought you Aunt Sara.

- No.

(laughs) - Aunt Sara, okay.

- Ann Petrowski and Sarah McKennis, those were my cooperating teachers.

(bell dings) - They're good ones, huh?

- They were great ones.

- Okay.

- They were great ones.

And I remember going home from the first day of student teaching, looking at my mom and I'm like, "I wanna be a teacher."

I love this so much.

I forgot how good it feels to sit in a classroom and to be with kids and to actually teach them, not just things about ag but about life, and- - People always say that, but is it true?

- It's true, it's true.

- Man, I'll tell ya, some of those young kids, you just wanna shake until they don't move.

- Well, that's why I teach high school kids.

That's why I teach high school kids.

- It's the same.

- They're like little young adults, you know?

They're growing up and getting over that- - Because you can't hit 'em anymore, right?

At school?

- No, no, no.

(laughs) - Like not at all?

- No.

- I mean, could you, can you shove them aggressively?

- No.

(laughs) - Well, how do you deal with 'em then?

Because they're a little smart-alecks?

- Well, you just have to find the human connection.

You know, just treat them like the young adults that they are and have those conversations.

Have the hard conversations with kids because there's a lot of times teachers will sugarcoat it to have what a kid wants to hear, but sometimes you need to say things that a kid needs to hear.

So again, like- - I mean, all joking aside, that has to be kind of tough.

'Cause I think I'd be the sugar-coater 'cause I wouldn't want to talk to 'em anymore.

But you're actually gonna go and like, dive deep into, because I'm sure a lot of 'em are dealing with really crappy home life, stuff like that.

- Right.

And I was always told in college, and I think this feeds into why I wanted to be a teacher, is that teachers serve as the one steady constant that a kid has in their life.

So if they don't have that support at home, or whatever it might be, they can come to school and know that, "Hey, Miss Jo, she cares about me."

- Is that what they call you?

- Yeah.

- Miss Jo.

- It is, yeah.

- Is that okay?

- I'm fine with it.

So it actually came from an FFA trip, where one of the, I think she was gonna be a junior that year, she looked at me and said, "Johannes is kind of a hard name to say.

There's a lot of syllables in there.

Can we shorten that up because it's just a hard name?"

- [Rob] It's three.

- Well, it got shortened to one, so it soon became Miss Jo and that's what stuck and yeah.

But, I just want my kids to know that Miss Jo cares about them.

They have a home in my classroom and you know, you gotta find the human connection to make an impact on 'em.

- That's fine and dandy.

But when you go home, are you able to leave the school at school?

- Yes and no.

- Yeah?

- I feel like being a younger teacher, it's harder because you're trying to not get swept under the wave of constantly planning and being in FFA things and that type of deal.

But now, year three, or going into year three, you kind of learn to set the, well this is things, like these are things I can do at work or at school, and kind of categorize them and then spend the time that's like, "Well, I have only this much time between FFA stuff and school stuff that I need to take this time for me and kind of find that divide."

- You're not that much older than the seniors.

- No.

- Do you, is it ever an issue where you find that maybe being on the younger side, it's hard to establish respect?

- I think so.

- Yeah.

- I think again, it goes to the same root of the problem.

Being somebody who is like a younger teacher, they realize that I might have gone through some of the same decision processes that they're going through because I have a lot of kids ask me about the college search.

- The what?

- The college search.

- Oh, yeah.

- Like what's it like to apply to a school, or how do you find scholarships and how do you deal with that on top of everything else?

And I just kind of take that and I go with it and give them as much advice as I can as somebody that's recently been through that and as a recent college grad and- - Do they kind of freak out about that?

Getting into college and all that?

- I've had a couple.

- Yeah.

- I've had a couple.

One thing that was super neat last year is that I actually had a student who got into West Point.

- [Rob] Oh.

- And seeing the application process for him and everything that he had to do.

It is super cool to see your kids go from, you know, scared little freshmen.

I haven't had my first class yet that's graduated as seniors.

My class that I started with, they're now juniors.

But again- - So next year?

- Yeah.

So next year at graduation, if I'm a little misty-eyed, I'm gonna miss those kids and the antics that they always have, like sticking glue sticks to my ceiling, you know, but- - And you find that humorous?

- Well, sometimes.

- I couldn't be a teacher.

I couldn't be a teacher.

- It was like a class experiment.

I walked in and there's a glue stick hanging up on my ceiling tile.

- Yeah.

- And I'm looking around, you know, the kids are just sitting there and they're snickering and they're like, "Hey, Jo, look up."

And I'm looking around at them and I'm like, "I am looking up, I'm looking at you."

And they're like, "No, look up."

And I see an Elmer's glue stick stuck to the ceiling tile.

And it lasted from February, all the way through the summer until I think our custodians took it down for summer cleaning.

- Aw.

- I know, I know.

The kids came in, they're like, "Where's the glue stick at?"

- [Rob] So it was holding up there by the glue?

- Yeah.

- Well done, Elmer's.

(bell dings) Well done.

(Alex laughing) That's impressive.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

Okay, so you, what type of classes are you teaching these kids?

Because I know we talked about you're teaching 'em how to make bouquets and stuff like that.

- Yeah, so I, so beginning of the day, I have a physical science class and ag and it swaps every year with a biological science class and ag.

So again, we're talking about non-living things, living things every other year.

Then I move into my two sections of floral design.

So making the bouquets, making corsages, boutonnieres.

Yesterday we actually did some floral taping.

So we had a bunch of like those Dum Dum pops and we're making like a- - The what?

- You know, like the Dum Dum suckers, like the lollipops?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- And we were taking floral tape and wrapping 'em around to make little bouquets in the shape of flowers to give back to teachers, you know, as a little back-to-school gift.

So teaching them some of the fundamentals.

We talk about international flower trade, we talk about conditioning and preserving of flowers, like basically keeping them alive when they're cut off the plant.

Then I teach ag science, which is soil crop science, animal science, food science.

And then intro, which is just a little bit of everything, from shop to ag.

- Well, and there might be some people hearing this going, "Oh, you know, flowers, whatever."

No, it's huge.

We make up numbers on this show.

It's like a $400 trillion business in this state.

(laughs) - There's a lot of money in it.

A lot of money in it.

- I mean, there's people and there's farmers that make a very good living catering to that stuff, but there is a lot of science that goes behind it.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- And I mean, that's the thing, it's knowing how to arrange those things and how to keep them alive and the science behind it.

- Mm hm.

Whatever else are some of the more unique things you guys do there in your school?

- Well, I mean, FFA is everywhere.

Every year we have a Veterans Day assembly, and I think that's one of the greatest things that we could ever do.

Because I, so both of my grandpas, one was in World War II, the other one was in the Korean War, and you know, just knowing some of the stories of the things that they went through, and being able, like our FFA plays a large role in that assembly.

To the point where last year, my floral design kids made centerpieces because they have a breakfast and nobody decorated for them.

And I was like, "We need to get something out here."

So, literally in a week turnaround time, after I figured that out, we, on a whim, made a bunch of floral centerpieces to sit at their tables.

And not only that, I had kids make about 70 or 80 flower pins for veterans to wear.

So it was like a little, like blue and white plaid ribbon, and it had a red mum in it and it had American flag pin on there, just to give to back to them because, you know, they deserve to be recognized.

Their stories need to be told.

And I feel like that's one of our biggest representations that FFA always has in the school because they're in official dress, they're wearing the blue jacket, and you know, they're trying to give back to people that gave so much to us, so.

- That is unbelievable.

Do you, does a high school student, do they realize what they're doing?

Do they realize what a nice thing they're doing and for the people that they're doing it?

Or is it just an assignment?

- I think they understand because the flower pin idea, that wasn't a class assignment.

I was more worried about getting those centerpieces done.

And I had a group of about 12, 14 kids that came into my classroom and they said, "Hey, we see that this is important.

My grandpa did this.

I had a parent that served and we see the value in it and we wanna help you."

And they came in during a study hall and made an assembly line and put those together.

So, I think they see the value of it.

- I think they do too.

And I think it's because of teachers like you, because you know, you could just check the boxes.

You didn't have to do that.

But it says a lot about you, that not only you did that, but you passed that onto your kids.

- Right.

- Your kids are able to, to understand that.

Highland High School, what's your mascot?

- Bulldogs.

- Okay.

I thought it'd be something high or whatever, you know.

- Yeah, I mean, they're the Highland Bulldogs.

- Okay.

- I love the Bulldogs.

- Are you guys good at sports and stuff?

- We're pretty good.

- Yeah.

- We're pretty good.

So, it's looking like golf and soccer might be taken off pretty well.

Football, we're still waiting.

We only had one home game and that was last week.

And now we're sitting, well it wasn't actually a home game.

It was actually in Jacksonville, Illinois.

So quite a stretch, you know, from Highland.

But we're, we're sitting, we're waiting for a first home game because, you know, everybody in the community and their brother shows up to those football games.

- Oh.

- Mm hm.

- (laughs) With the high school and that spirit, I mean, it seems like the kids today, it, I don't know, maybe didn't have the high school spirit that they maybe had 30 years ago.

- Mm hm.

- Are are you seeing a resurgence in that?

- Well, I think our Hooligans Club does a great job.

- [Rob] What is that?

- (laughs) It's our like student section and the seniors are the ones that lead it.

So, similar to Orange Crush, like they're out there and they're doing that, having such a great time.

- You can't, you can't help yourself, can you?

- No, I mean, like, it's a part of my life.

- Let's spend the- - I was in that, you know.

- The rest of our short time talking about the University of Illinois.

- Oh, I mean- - And how superior they are to Southern.

Well, go ahead.

- I mean, U of I was home.

U of I was home and it's always gonna be home no matter what I do.

That's where we come back and I mean, IOL that's, that's it.

- Oh, be quiet.

No, nobody.

No.

(laughs) Well, first of all, I want to thank your dad for watching.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I mean, you should take a lesson from him.

- I mean, I watch.

I watched you.

- You watched this show.

- I knew I who you guys were.

(Rob laughing) I think Gary Johannes played a, played a good role in that.

But I mean, like, you know, he loves RFD TV and he loves just watching The Shark Farmer and he was blowing out of his mind and was like, "So she actually met The Shark Farmer?"

- This is literally- - I did, I did.

- At farm shows, that's all it is is FFA kids coming up to me saying, "Oh, my grandpa watches you."

- Well, actually, so the coworker I was walking with, Claire Geiger, she was like, "Hey, there's Rob Sharkey, there's The Shark Farmer."

And I mean, I bolted because I'm like, "I have to go get this opportunity for dad."

So, and I mean, I had to look like the roadrunner and like a blast of smoke and dust and whatever it was.

- Well, Alex, I want to thank you, not just for coming today, but what you're doing for these kids that are in your life.

You could tell that you truly care about them and you're trying to make their lives better with your interaction.

It says a lot about you.

It says a lot about FFA.

Alex, thank you for coming.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next time.

(intense country rock music) (intense country rock music continues) If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to explore more of our local content.

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We can't wait to see you next time on "A Shot of Ag".