'Minted' a Farmer

How an American FFA Degree recipient with little ag background forged a successful SAE and career in the field.

- By Lauren Denton

Brock Ashley's mint harvesting and oil extraction SAE won him the 2021 Wisconsin FFA Fiber and Oil Crop Production Proficiency Award.

Brock Ashley didn’t grow up on a farm, but he found his place — or rather, agricultural placement — on one. In 2017, at the end of his high school freshman year, he joined a morning farmhand program for high schoolers at Gumz Farms in Endeavor, Wisconsin. With the exception of a semester at college in fall 2021, he has been there since.

“I knew I wanted to do something in ag, and that was the closest opportunity that worked for me,” Ashley said. “My parents just had to drop me off at school, and the bus took us there.”