Charles City FFA members to be featured on nationally televised news show

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

FFA students from Charles City and Rudd-Rockford-Marble Rock will be featured Monday evening on a nationally-televised program.

Students who traveled to Nebraska in April to help in flood relief efforts will have their story told in a news segment on RFD-TV at 6 p.m. on Monday. The program will air again at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday and 2:30 p.m. the following Sunday.

The program the segment will be aired on is “FFA Today,” which is described as “A weekly program that features students living the FFA motto of ‘Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, and Living to Serve.’”

“FFA Today” is hosted by FFA members who showcase their peers’ accomplishments in the classroom, community and in agribusiness.

In early April, 10 Charles City FFA students and seven more from Rudd-Rockford Marble Rock took a trip to a farm near Schuyler, Nebraska, to assist in recovery efforts with Drew Wolfe. Wolfe’s cattle and farming operation had been catastrophically devastated by the flooding along the Missouri River, to the point many of his feedlots had been lost and cattle were stranded.

The Charles City crew that went on the trip were Lauren Connell, Lynn Hoeft, Anna Krumwiede, Marissa Daniels, Justin Heyer, Bronson Forsyth, Joe Heidebrink, Max Deeter, Dan Laube and Jacob White. RRMR students who joined them were Jayden Jorgenson, Maggie Hain, Mac LaCoste, Dawson Schreiver, Sawyer Salisbury, Trey Norby and Nate Rankin.

Charles City FFA advisor Bret Spurgin, along with Jim Lundberg and RRMR FFA advisor Hannah Hartman led the group. Together, with help from the family and some Schuyler FFA members, they cleared, tore out and rebuilt between 4 to 5 miles of fencing that had been wrecked by the flooding.

Kellen Hevican of KCHA radio, who is from Nebraska and is a friend of the Wolfe family, was with the work crew, as was Matt Hoeft of the Floyd County Cattlemen.

RFD-TV is a 24-hour television channel dedicated to serving the needs and interests of rural America and “reconnecting city with country.”

It states its mission as “to serve the needs and interests of rural America through programming related to traditional music and entertainment, agriculture, equine and the rural lifestyle.”

RFD-TV is available through most cable and satellite affiliates. On Mediacom, it is channel 239 and channel 793 in high-definition. It is channel 345 on DirecTV and channel 231 on DISH Network. Viewers can check with their dish or cable network or go to rfdtv.com online to learn if the network is available to them.