What has been going on in Ag in Term 1 

Term 1 2024 has been a big term for Gladstone High Schools Agriculture program. Starting with the cleaning of the Merino shed, conducted by the Gladstone CFS Cadets. Cadets came to school after hours to practice CFS skills. This helped Gladstone High School by efficiently cleaning out the underneath of our Merino sheep shed, which is a large, smelly job to do by hand shovel and wheelbarrow! This partnership is very valuable to the Gladstone High School Agriculture program. We thank the CFS cadets and Captains that came to help and want to see more students involved in this program through the Gladstone CFS. If you want to join the Gladstone Cadets, contact Hayden Prior on 0428457026. 

A new event introduced into the program in 2024 was our very first Sheep Day. This saw most of our new Merino Wethers for the 2024 show season being introduced to their new home. We had some of our local agriculture community help our students learn and experience shearing, rouseabout, wool throwing and skirting the fleece.  

After all the sheep had been shorn students were then shown the process of rounding sheep into the draft to be backlined and drenched to protect against anything nasty. 

The Gladstone High School agriculture team would like to Ben Crawford for allowing us to borrow his shearing trailer, Mick Hollitt for coming in to provide us with some shearing experience, and Nigel Clogg and Andrew Zanker for teaching us the importance of backlining and drenching. 

Following from this, students and staff have been involved in picking grapes from our vineyard. Many hands made light work for a quick morning that was very successful. Gladstone High School grows shiraz grapes to produce our own wine! Something to look out for to purchase over the coming months. Learning these vineyard skills and maintaining them throughout the year provides valuable skill building opportunities for our students that can flow directly into agriculture work in the future. 

Students have also been involved in fence maintenance. We have been lucky enough to have some workshops run to show students how to build fencing boxes, twitch wire, and use a Gripple Wire Joiner. Students have also hung a gate, using different techniques to normal fence building.  

Tune into the next newsletter of the term to find out what else has been going on in Gladstone High School Agriculture Program.  

Mr Wren