If Fillmore High School’s agricultural classroom off California 23 smells like a barnyard, that’s because it is one.
Dust swirls outside the large complex where pigs are housed; other pens are filled with the sounds of barnyard animals being tended by buddingteen-age farmers.
The classroom is actually the largest school farm in Ventura County, an 80-acre spread that includes lemon and orange groves, fields of row crops, greenhouses and, of course, barns.
Students learn the farming basics that begin not with books but with chores like feeding animals and cleaning pigpens. Still, sophomore Perry Hopman, 15, would rather be with his animal, a messy 197-pound pig named Johnny Walker Red, than in a classroom taking tests.
In a way, he is doing both. As an agriculture student, Perry gets to raise his pig as a school project while readying the animal for the Ventura County Fair.
Perry calls himself a “city kid” who, until eight years ago, lived in Thousand Oaks. But since his parents moved to Fillmore, Perry has taken to farm life.
Last year, he found a pet pig to raise. He taught Johnny Walker Red to push a soccer ball around with his snout and to roll over.
“He’s real lazy,” Perry said. “He likes lying down. You just push him down, and he lies there.”
Perry has learned to show his bristly red-haired pig. His animal is expected to bring in $400 when he’s sold at the fair.
Students at Fillmore High School get excited about rolling up their shirtsleeves and getting down and dusty, said teacher Marilee Belloumini. About 60 animals nurtured under her agricultural expertise are going to the Ventura County Fair this year, she said.
On a recent morning, Belloumini herself picked up a pair of shears and showed a class of about 15 students how to groom a calf.
It’s not easy being a teen-age farmer. Parents bring their children to the farm as early as 6:30 a.m. Students have to finish their chores by 8 a.m., Belloumini said. Then they come back in the afternoon to feed animals and clean pens.
“I see kids spend 30 hours a week out there,” she said.
Back when Fillmore was a smaller farm town, students learned the trade from relatives, but these days many of the students who are active on the school farm come from families who never had one, said Belloumini, who has been teaching agriculture at Fillmore for 10 years. Last year, she took over as department chairman after a longtime agriculture teacher retired.
Farms like Fillmore’s are becoming fewer and farther between. Only about 340 high schools in California have agriculture programs, and of those, only half have farms or agricultural laboratories, said Warren Reed, who supervises agricultural programs for the state Department of Education.
In Ventura County, only Santa Paula and Fillmore have school farms, although high schools in Ventura, Camarillo and Oxnard have laboratories.
During the 1980s, high school agricultural programs declined as school boards demanded more academic graduation requirements and farmland became more expensive to maintain, Reed said.
But three years ago, the number of students taking agriculture-related courses began to climb, he said.
Today, there are about 32,000 students enrolled in agriculture courses throughout the state.
During a visit to the farm several years ago, Reed said he was “quite impressed.” For the smallest school district in Ventura County, “it’s easily the most active agricultural program,” he said.
The school district began farming the land, owned by Santa Barbara oilman Kenneth H. Hunter, after floodwatersleaped out of the Santa Clara River in 1969 and destroyed a golf course and a horse pasture, said Dick Mosbarger, a teacher who headed the Fillmore High School’s agriculture department for 27 years.
In 1976, voters approved a tax so the school district could buy the land.
Community support for the purchase was strong in Fillmore, Mosbarger said.
Since then, students have farmed the land as if it were their own. Eight years ago, orange trees were planted and lemon trees soon followed, Mosbarger said. Pens to hold steers, sheep and pigs were built.
The farm occupies 80 acres, but only about 50 are farmed. The school district operates the farm on a $50,000 yearly budget, much of it paid back with revenues from the fruit sold through commercial dealers.
Last school year, the district cleared about $40,000 from the orange and lemon harvest, said Barbara Spieler, business director for the school district. The previous year it made $12,000.
Sam Mayhew, manager of the Oxnard Lemon Co., said most of the farm’s lemons can be shipped to some of the company’s most demanding customers in Japan and Hong Kong and on the East Coast. Lemons fetch about 75 cents a pound these days, he said.
The school farm’s fruit “is as good or better as the 100 growers we handle,” Mayhew said.
In addition to lemons and oranges, the farm turns out a bumper crop of students. More than 70% of the students who take agricultural courses end up in the farm business or in college-level programs, Mosbarger said.
“They go into custom farming, where they farm for somebody else, or go into sales, or some kind of service for agriculture,” Mosbarger said.
But not all of the 100 students in the high school’s Future Farmers of America chapter are in it to become farmers, Belloumini said.
Fillmore, a town of about 12,000, has few after-school activities for youths, she said. Some are not interested in sports but would still like something to do after school.
“That’s one of the main things we do — give kids something to do after school that’s wholesome,” Belloumini said.
Mike Richardson, president of the high school’s Future Farmers of America, plans to trade his after-school activities at the farm for full-time academic work at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo next year.
The 17-year-old has been active in baseball, football and basketball while raising steers and pigs on the side. He spends about 25 hours a week in agriculture classes and working at the farm, he said. In addition to that, he heads meetings with other FFA members.
Some of the other athletes make fun of the “aggies,” Mike said. But that doesn’t bother him.
Mike, whose father manages farms for other people, said he has learned more about the business of farming than how to feed a hog. He has learned about plant diseases, pesticides and farm accounting.
Working on the farm does involve some sacrifices, he said. Last year, the first baseman missed a game to attend the state finals in Fresno in judging citrus fruit. But with his help, Fillmore’s citrus team won against 20 other teams, he said.
Animals also have needs year-round. Even on Christmas Day, “I have to get up, and I open my presents,” Richardson said. “Then I go feed my animals.”
About the author:
Pascual is a Los Angeles Times staff writer
