High school agriculture teachers never have a day off, not really. Because animals need to be taken care of every day—including weekends and holidays—ag teachers are always thinking about their farm classrooms. For 29 years, Jennifer Kuhns has been required to think, “The Farm comes first.” Who’s taking care of the pigs today? Did last night’s downpour flood the lamb pens? Who’s going to water the strawberry plants during spring break? 

But Kuhns will finally get a break from daily farm responsibilities when she retires at the end of the school year. It’s not surprising that she’s unsure what retirement will look like for her, but soon she will have the time to relax and plan for what’s next.

As a high school student, Kuhns was involved in Future Farmers of America (FFA) and the agriculture program at Costa Mesa High School. “I showed rabbits nationally—French lops—and I had every animal. I had two steers, four pigs, and eight lambs. That was my thing, but then I was kind of burnt out from it,” Kuhns said. “My family has a dairy farm in Oregon, so there’s a tie, too.”

When it was time to go to college, Kuhn took a different path. She was on the speech team at Orange Coast College and at San Diego State, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in speech communications. But soon after college, she realized she missed the agriculture world and remembered how much her high school’s FFA program helped her cope with school.

“I really liked the whole thing,” said Kuhns, who was Costa Mesa High School’s chapter president as well as the FFA regional president. “It really is what got me through high school, and that’s what I wanted to give back by going back into Ag. So I transferred to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and got my Master’s in Ag Education.”

Kuhns remembers her first year of teaching agriculture as somewhat of a disaster. “I think kids tend to take advantage of young teachers before you know how to give ‘em The Stare,” Kuhns said. 

However, when her long-time best friend and fellow agriculture teacher, Shannon Alcott, joined her at Fullerton, she found herself enjoying teaching more.

“Kuhns and I have known each other since we were in FFA in high school,” said Alcott, who went to Buena Park High School. “So it was really a natural progression for us to work together as ag teachers.”

Along with teaching agriculture science courses, Kuhns has encouraged students to become leaders through the FFA program. Junior and FFA secretary Jordan Roy said she was reluctant to run for an FFA officer position as a sophomore.

“She was the one who really pushed me to step outside of my comfort zone and become an FFA officer. Mrs. Kuhns was so supportive,” Roy recalled. “Honestly, if she didn’t encourage me, I definitely wouldn’t have done it.”

Roy says she felt “out of her depth” as a novice showman, but Kuhns helped her feel more confident not only around animals but also around people, gently pushing her to make new friends. Kuhns has also offered Roy several learning opportunities.

“She had me do all of her ear tags last year for the fair. I’ve learned so much from my experience with pigs which helped me branch out to show steers,” said Roy, who works within the pig and lamb team as well as the steers. Roy is in charge of helping freshmen take care of their pigs and lambs. Jordan helps raise steers by feeding them, ensuring they stay healthy by checking up on them, administering medication when needed, and selling her steer off to the market by July.

Jade Estes, a junior and chapter president, enjoyed meetings with Kuhns and the other FFA officers during the previous school year. “We had meetings for an hour, but we would stay even longer just to talk and laugh with her. It was really fun,” Estes said. One of her favorite memories of Mrs. Kuhns is from right before the annual FFA banquet—the end of the school year was on the horizon.

“The sun was blazing, and I have very fair skin, so I was sunburnt,” Estes remembers. “So she gave me her jacket, her shawl, and her hat. I was walking around in her clothes to protect me from the sun, but I thought it was sweet that she wanted to protect me.”

While she’ll no longer be teaching, Kuhns still cherishes the connections she’s formed with her students.
“It’s one of my favorite parts that I’ll miss about teaching,” Kuhns said. “And I think the advantage of being an Ag teacher is that you get that relationship where I had them all as freshmen, and now usually I’ll have them all as seniors, and so you get, like, ‘Oh, you had my sister, you had my cousin, you had my mother, my father,’ so it’s generations.”

Junior and FFA vice president Sophia Sosa has a close relationship with Kuhns. In fact, Sosa’s father, David, was one of Kuhns’s students. “My favorite memories would be traveling with her to events and always bugging her about taking us to Starbucks,” Sosa said.

Kuhns’s encouragement has helped Sosa manage the stress of being vice president, whether that’s Kuhns buying FFA students Jersey Mike’s sandwiches during long competitions or helping out with officer planning. “She just shows up and is like, ‘Whatever you need, I’ll do it for you,’” Sosa said. “She’s always one text away.”
While she may no longer be on campus, her years of dedication to FFA and the connections she’s formed as a result will remain.  “I feel proud that I created a safe environment. A space where students could come to me and feel safe.”