The Magic Valley is home to Valley School, an institution surrounded by farms and families deeply rooted in agriculture. Despite this agricultural heritage, the school currently lacks an agricultural program.
Seventeen-year-old Carson Mai is determined to change that.
"Before my lifetime, we used to have a bunch of short horns here, so we're trying to get back into the short horns business," he said as he showed me around the homestead.
Carson has two steers and is taking a heifer to his first breeding project for 4-H. "It'll be a kind of a new experience for me," he said.
The high school junior envisions a future as a cowboy while also considering welding as a side profession.
"I want to do this for a living," he said. "I want to get into it right now so that I can make a living out of it one day."
While Carson is eager to embrace his family's agricultural legacy, he faces a significant hurdle: "We don't have an ag program. We're one of the only schools in the Magic Valley that doesn't have an ag program going for us right now," Carson said.
This lack of an agricultural curriculum is a stark contrast to his father, Curtis, who benefited from the program before graduating from Valley High School in 1999. Now, a community effort is underway to restore the program.
"There’s a significant number of kids that are interested in agriculture that go there," said Katy Starr, who has been involved with Valley Ag Ed Foundation in getting the school's ag program going again.
Last year, the district received an Idaho Career Ready Students Grant to fund much of the new building necessary for the program.
"And now we're at a point where we're fundraising to get the remaining amount of that money," Katy added.
The community is rallying behind this initiative. A fundraising event featuring a tri-tip dinner, along with live and silent auctions, will take place on April 11. "Yeah, around here, I think it's really important to get that knowledge, especially early in life," Carson explained. "I think that you know, people's families, if you just hop back like two generations, they were farmers, and now not all of us know everything about agriculture, and that could be really beneficial for us in my opinion."
Tickets for the fundraising event at Canyon Crest are on sale until April 3, and those interested can find more details from Valley Ag Ed Foundation's FaceBook page
- This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been, in part, converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
