As Role Fades, Holding on to Farm Roots

Krista Caserta, 18, backed the green tractor through traffic cones one day this week on top of a hill at C.S. Monroe Technology Center in Leesburg. The John Deere rumbled as she tried not to jackknife the mesh trailer bouncing behind her; she was racing against a stopwatch, and she had to balance speed and skill as she battled classmates for the right to represent Loudoun County in a regional tractor-driving competition.

The event seemed a throwback for a county in which farmland has been giving way to subdivisions. Loudoun County's Future Farmers of America has been in slow decline for years, and a stand of autumn trees is all that separates Caserta from a development of houses spinning around a cul-de-sac.

Loudoun's embattled farming heritage holds on at this school for a few hours every day. But with the end last year of the agricultural curriculum at Loudoun Valley and Loudoun County high schools, this hilltop is about all that's left for agriculture-minded students. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who has billed herself as a representative of rural and small-town America, was introduced at Monday's rally in Leesburg not by a farmer but by a hard-hat-wearing Colombian immigrant who owns a construction business.

Most of the students in the horticulture program here at Monroe enjoy their time atop the tractor. But not all of them will end up in fields in which those skills will be directly relevant.

"I'm not sure what I want to do after [graduation]," Caserta said Monday before she hopped on the tractor. "Probably nursing or radiology."

She kept backing up, spinning the yellow wheels first left, then right as instructor Dennis Sizemore coached her from the sidelines. Finally, the trailer was under her control. She pulled forward, Sizemore checking her position, and she drove toward the slalom course, where she threaded her way through a series of cones, doing a figure eight and trying not to crash into the imaginary shed to her left.

Sizemore said that whether students will end up in agriculture is largely beside the point.

"The tractor is just a medium to help them learn skills about safety, about self-discipline," he said. Navigating the tractor through the course, along with other parts of the horticulture program, teaches critical thinking in a way that Virginia's Standard of Learning doesn't measure, he said.

When Sizemore started teaching agriculture in Loudoun in 1975, the county was still a farming powerhouse. He coached a dairy team; the emphasis was still on hands-on skills. By the time the school system shut down the agriculture programs at the two high schools last year -- a shift that Sizemore and others bitterly fought -- science was the focus. Just four years ago, there were 180 students in the programs at the two schools. Now that's down to the 18 or so at Monroe.

Some students, unlike Caserta, intend to go into fields more directly related to the program. Tara Tacci, 18, who represented Loudoun County at last year's regional tractor competition, will enroll next year in Virginia Tech's agricultural technology program.

"Last year was my first year driving a tractor," Tacci said. "I love it." She said that she might want to start her own horticulture business or own her own farm -- a more feasible dream in the western part of the county, where she's from, than in the suburban eastern half.

Chris Rupp, 17, won the competition Monday by speeding through the course and avoiding penalties for sloppy technique. (On Tuesday, he competed in the regional competition in Clarke County but failed to advance to the state finals.) He said he wants to do "something in the agriculture business." He grew up spending time on his grandfather's farm, though his family sold the land a few years ago.

As the class wound to an end and Rupp rolled the tractor down the hill to its space in the school's parking lot, the students prepared to go home. They had to be careful. Cars don't handle like tractors, Tacci said.

"It's weird when you're driving a tractor and then you get into a car," she said.