PERIODICALS DIVISION
W 209 PATTEE LIBRARY
PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY PARK PA 16802 _
VOL 29 No. 34
Pa. FFA goes West for leader
BY DICK ANGLESTEIN
UNIVERSITY PARK -
Following the heavy weekend and
Monday rains, sparkling blue skies
spread an appropriately colored
canopy over the Penn State
campus this week.
For beneath those blue skies was
a sea of blue jackets on campus as
Pa. FFA members participated in
their annual Activities Week
competition at the 56th Summer
Convention.
Chapters from throughout the
state sent their best to compete
and “go for the gold” in more than
two dozen different contests.
And out of the 1700 or so com
petitors emerged an approximate
elite 10 percent who attained that
gold - some of whom will now
move on to regional and national
competition.
While traditional FFA power
areas made strong showings in the
contests, there was evidence too
that youthful ag expertise is
moving west.
Contest highlights showed:
-Lancaster County clearly
emerged as the top winners,
capturing some 10 of the 27 first
place golds in the team and in
dividual contests.
-The only other counties with
multiple first-place golds were
Berks and Beaver (there’s the
west) with two each.
-Single first-place golds were
recorded by competitors from the
Part IV -
Merchandising
(Editor’s note: Ask a farmer why
he decided to dairy farm, and the
reasons will be as varied as the
breeds of dairy cattle. Some will
answer “for the way of life,” while
others will respond “to work with
cattle.” Today, Laura England,
dairy editor of Lancaster Far
ming, visits with Dennis Wolff of
Millville, Columbia County, who
went into dairying with goals to
establish a quality Holstein herd
for merchandising purposes. While
Wolff relies on the merchandising
potential of his herd to make his
A solid dairy operation and a strong embryo transfer
program form the basis for Dennis Wolff's merchandising
enterprise.
Four Sections
counties of Somerset, Union,
Lebanon, Washington, Cum
berland, Centre, Fayette, Blair,
Erie, Perry, York, Dauphin and
Chester.
As the list shows, a good
representation of Western Penn
sylvania winners were crowned
and top laurels in the West must go
to the H. G. Parkinson Chapter at
Fort Cherry High School in
Washington Courtly with both the
new state president and the winner
of the Creed competition.
-And when the Pa. FFA finally
decided to break with tradition and
elect a female president last year,
they stuck with it this year and
Lancaster crowns dairy princess
living, the success of his operation,
as all dairy operations, depends on
the current dairy situation).
Lancaster Farming, Saturday, June 23,1984
elected a second female FFA’er as
leader for 1984-85. She’s 17-year-old
Laurie J. Duran, daughter of
Michael G. and JoAnn Duran, R 1
Bulger, Washington County. Ac
tive in parliamentary procedure
and public speaking, she has
served her chapter as secretary
and president and her county as
reporter, secretary and president.
Her projects have included poultry
meats and home gardening.
The remaining slate of new FFA
officers includes:
Vice President - Tim Pfautz,
Cloister Chapter, Ephrata. He
follows older brother Mike who
(Turn to Page A 26)
Lancaster County's new
Dairy Princess is 18-year-old
Judy Miller, the daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Miller,
R 2 Manheim. Miss Miller was
crowned 1984 Dairy Princess
last Friday night during
ceremonies at the Farm and
Home Center, Lancaster.
Her story appears on Page
814 with many other county
pageant results also listed
throughout Section B.
BY LAURA ENGLAND
MILLVILLE At the young age
of 16 years, when most high school
students are undecided about their
futures, one Columbia County
farm boy was fairly certain about
his future plans. It took one year
away from home and in college to
convince this optimistic young
man to return to the family farm
and begin his dairy career.
All this took place 14 years ago
when Dennis Wolff, Millville,
decided he liked working with
cattle enough to make it a career.
“I felt that I always had that
advantage over a lot of the kids I
went to school with,” Dennis said,
"in that (dairying) is what I
wanted to do.”
Dennis explained that as a
teenager, his parents gave him
plenty of responsibilities on the
farm. They allowed him to make
decisions on the work to be done,
breeding and purchasing.
“They let me have plenty of
responsibility,” Dennis explained,
ROCK SPRINGS Dairy cows
and other livestock in Penn
sylvania may soon have anew
salad in their daily diet - alfalfa
mixed with rye grass.
The alfalfa - ryegrass mixture,
replacing the more traditional
orchard grass mix, was among the
Penn State research featured in
the forage portion of the Agronomy
Field Day on Tuesday at Rock
Springs.
Sid Bosworth, newly arrived
from Alabama to replace John
Baylor as the Nittany Lion forage
i mmm
Whatever it holds,
it’s in your hands
“and I guess I must have handled
it pretty well or either accepted
responsibility very well. I guess I
always enjoyed cattle and that was
my only interest.”
All this responsibility helped to
mold his future plans, Dennis said.
From the time he was in high
school, he said he had "no other
plans or intentions than to come
back to the farm and take care of
the cattle.”
After spending a year as a dairy
production major at Delaware
Valley College, Dennis returned
home and formed a partnership
with his parents. This partnership
was dissolved a little over a year
ago, Dennis said, when he and his
wife, Lois, bought the partnership
out.
Laurie J. Duran, 1984-85 Pa. FFA President.
Alfalfa salad features more rye
BY DICK ANGLESTEIN
Up until 1974, the Wolff’s Pen-Col
“The future of merchandising looks good,
both domestically and internationally/''
$7.50 per Year
expert, lists a number of ad
vantages to mixing the perennial
ryegrass with the alfalfa:
“Ryegrass is a high quality
forage,” he explained. “A recent
Pennsylvania study has shown it to
be higher in crude protein and in
vitro dry matter digestibility than
the alfalfa- orchardgrass mix
tures.”
Other advantages:
Alfalfa persists better with
ryegrass than with orchardgrass
“In the same study, ryegrass
(Turn to Page Al 6)
Farm housed a herd of Guernseys.
The breed was replaced with
Holsteins, however, when Dennis
decided to capitalize on cattle
merchandising.
Merchandising
The switch from Guernseys to
Holsteins, which was completed in
1977, was done because Dennis said
he found more potential in mer
chandising Holsteins. To establish
a herd worthy of merchandising,
the Wolff’s looked for top
pedigreed animals.
The first herd of Holsteins
purchased was from the Tom
Nichlos farm, Clinton County, and
consisted of 20 animals. Other
cattle were purchased at con
signment sales such as the Pa All-
(Turn to Page A 32)