OFI 1343: Horses, Western Heritage & SAE Grants | FFA SAE Edition | Ellas Gaes | Pierce High School FFA

I am a big fan of proactive people, people who go out and make life happen for them rather than letting life happen to them.  Our guest today, Ellas Gaes, is definitely one of those people.  Ella is a member of the Pierce High School FFA Chapter in Pierce, Nebraska.  She lives out of town with her family, and they keep horses on their property. Even though the horse was the main form of transportation throughout Europe and Asia well before North America was ever discovered, the American West has captured the horse as its symbol, almost as if horse riding originated here.  Ella embraces this culture, roping whenever and wherever she can and helping her family members in Colorado every May with their cattle branding. Ella also embraced this with her supervised agricultural experience through the FFA.  She has been making jewelry as a hobby for quite some time, and the way that things work in her FFA chapter, she was compelled to get serious about her SAE this year.  Once she really thought about what she was going to do, it became apparent to her that making and selling jewelry that celebrated the Western way of life and the West's ties to agriculture was the right fit for her.