If you should arrive home one day after work soon and find a small menagerie on your front lawn, don’t worry.
It’s just that ‘You’ve Been Farmed.’
Working off an idea that has seen flamingoes utilized for ‘You’ve Been Flocked’ fundraising for the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life event, the Escalon FFA has developed a small farm of cutout animals that will be placed on yards in the community. For a fee, residents can call and have the animals delivered to a friend, family member or neighbor for the ‘You’ve Been Farmed’ effort. The person being ‘farmed’ then can pay a fee to have the animals removed and sent along to another location.
The idea is to raise money in a fun, eye-catching way.
FFA Secretary Kenlee Hiatt said she saw a similar idea on Pinterest and Reporter Cassidy Ley-Han said advisor Jennifer Terpstra noted her church had also done a similar style fundraiser. EHS staffer Gypsy Stark originally planted the seed for the fundraiser, Hiatt and Ley-Han added, with other staffers offering suggestions about how to fine tune it for the FFA organization.
“We will place the animals and there will be information on the back of one about how to have them removed,” Hiatt said of the effort. “We also will place an Escalon FFA emblem with it so people know what it’s all about.”
Since members of the FFA will be doing the ‘farming’ Hiatt said the animals likely will be delivered after-school hours but hopefully before the person being farmed returns home from work. They also want the community to know about the project so they aren’t mistaken for trespassers when they set up the farm animals on lawns around town.
There are six animals for the ‘farm’ and they include a sheep, a goat, chicken, pig, cow and a rooster. Members of the school’s wood shop classes did the cutouts and painted them, and they are ready for use.
“We’re hoping people take it lightheartedly,” said Ley-Han. “It’s a way to prank each other for a good cause; we hope people don’t take offense to it.”
With farming such a mainstay in the community, FFA members said they feel pretty confident that residents will get behind the effort. For a small donation, you can make sure someone you know gets ‘farmed’ with the money benefiting the local FFA.
“We’re trying to raise $3,500 and it will last through December,” Ley-Han added of the goals for the effort.
That gives the organization a little under four months to be out in the community ‘farming’ to fundraise. They plan to start the effort this week, as soon as they get an order to ‘farm’ someone. All the animals are included in the donation, along with the FFA emblem to signify why the farm yard is on your lawn.
