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Pigs --- and kids --- in training Photo by Bob Pennell Ali Salazar gives her pigs, Willie, right, and Sparkle a little push during a morning walk at the Crater High School land lab. Land lab teaches students about life down on the farm BY VICKI GUARINO CENTRAL POINT -- Classrooms are locked up for summer, but one Crater High School lab is busy sunup to sundown. This is the land lab, an agricultural and environmental classroom unique in Jackson County. Other high schools might have a couple of stalls or livestock holding pens, but the land lab is a full-fledged farm. And at the height of summer, as the Jackson County Fair is about to begin, students raising livestock are working harder than ever. "I come out eight times a day to work here," says eighth-grader Kristen Callahan. She's training her pig to behave in the show ring next week. Kristen spends hours walking and grooming the animal, feeding it and hosing it down on hot afternoons. Kristen has had the hog since April, but she reserved space at Crater's land lab on Upton Road nine or ten months ago. "All the pens are taken," she says. If she hadn't signed up early she might not have found room, nixing her chances of competing in the fair and earning some money with a profitable sale at the fair auction. Next door, stalls are filled with cattle for the fair's beef competitions. Beyond the barns, there's a hay field and pasture for grazing. One student keeps two horses at the lab for Future Farmers of American equestrian competition. And every spring, the lab is filled with lambs for the county spring fair. Some years, students stake out ground for truck farming. "Whatever some kid thinks is a way to make money," says Crater vocational agriculture teacher John Dimick. "Our's is the only facility that offers the multitude of opportunities." Lab resident caretaker Jose Salazar says the projects revolve around the competition and auctions of the county's two major FFA and 4H youth fairs - the spring lamb fair and the mid-summer county fair. While those events are rooted in a tradition of family farming, Crater's land lab shows how that tradition is changing. Farm life is fading as shopping centers and subdivisions overtake barn yards and pastures, but student's interest in farming is keeping demand strong for land lab facilities. So strong, in fact, that the Central Point School Board adopted usage rules a few weeks ago. One purpose was to rank competing uses for the fair use of the limited space. That the 21-acre farm lab is growing more popular at a time when fewer students come from farm families is no surprise to Dimick. "If you sit back and think about how people covet open space and farms, it makes more sense," he says. With fewer farms, fewer kids can raise livestock at home. A growing number are like Kristen Callahan. "I like raising animals," she says. "I like working with them to make then look as good as I can." She just doesn't have the space to work at home. "They don't allow pigs in the back yard in the subdivision," says Kerry Reese as he helps stepdaughter Jessica Ennis with her market hog. Years ago, Jessica says, she traveled to her grandparents' home in California to raise her pigs. Now the Cascade Christian School 11th-grader and her sister can train and check up on their animals several times a day. "I like it because it's out in the country, but not far away," Jessica says. 4H members like Jessica have access to Crater lab space after Central Point district agriculture students are accommodated. School officials also set aside space for students in Crater's Rogue Eco-Systems natural sciences program. Combined, says Dimick, the demand for farm space is greater now than ever in the 20 or so years the district has owned the site. "It's real life, what goes on in agriculture," he says. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA