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Huntington North FFA president Winters wants to be the farm-business connection

Julie Winters, president of the Huntington North High School FFA, says she wants to be the connection between big business and the farming community.
Julie Winters, president of the Huntington North High School FFA, says she wants to be the connection between big business and the farming community. Photo by Cindy Klepper.

Originally published Feb. 19, 2015.

Julie Winters wants to be an accountant.

You might think that’s an odd career choice for someone who’s grown up on a farm and leads the local FFA.

She doesn’t see it that way.

She sees it as a way to create a connection between farmers and big business.

“I feel like there’s something lost in between, sometimes,” she says.

“I want to work at a big grain operation. I like being on the business side … I want to be the person who’s in touch, helping farmers.”

Winters, president of the FFA chapter at Huntington North High School, is well-versed in farm life.

Her parents, Carl and Sheryl Winters, operate a dairy farm in Huntington County, and she and her siblings have always been involved.

“I do a lot more with growing of crops than anything else,” she says.

“Her dad sticks her with hay most of the time,” Winters’ mom, Sheryl Winters, says.

She mows the hay and tends it — lays it out so the sun can dry it — then rakes it into rows and puts it in the chopper or round baler.

Eventually, it will be fed to the livestock.

It’s something she can do in the summer, when school’s not in session.

Handling the hay on the family farm also gives her a leg up in her 4-H crops project.

“The hay that I spent all summer working on, I take in (to the 4-H Fair),” she says.

The connection between farm and 4-H continues with the soil and water conservation project.

“It became one of my favorite projects,” Winters says, because it asks her to solve real problems. “It’s more real life scenarios.”

The flowers she raises for 4-H are “amazing,” her mom says, and the 4-H forestry program has opened both their eyes to Indiana’s state parks, their history and the involvement of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Winters currently serves as president of the 4-H Junior Leaders and is a member of the Extension Board. She got involved in FFA as an eighth-grader.

“My sister did it, and all my cousins,” she says.

Her freshman year in high school, she participated in everything that FFA had to offer. That, she says, let her pick and choose the activities she really liked during her subsequent years.

And while she and many of her fellow FFA members have farm backgrounds, many others do not.

“We actually have a lot of town people in it,” she says. “There are kids on the soils team who don’t live on a farm.”

Despite the difference in backgrounds, she says, the FFA members are close.

“It’s like a big family,” she says. “Everybody gets along … It’s just like being in a sport. You just kind of fit in.”