This story was edited on Oct., 8, 2024.

It is a mid-morning Monday on the 65-acre Boyd Buchanan campus and a dozen students in Melissa Owens's Agriscience class are planting yellow onion sets, moving zinnia transplants to the greenhouse, checking on - really, cuddling - the lop-eared bunny, tilling new beds, making plans for a fall flower sale.

The bell rings. Class over.

Then, a student asks a question that whips our heads around:

"Can we stay?" asks sophomore Rebecca Clemons. "During our free period?"

Can we stay? It is the most precious question in all of education. If given a choice, would students freely come to class? Willingly stay during their free period?

Absolutely, says Rebecca, echoing so many other students at Boyd Buchanan.  

"This is my favorite part of school," said Braden Deal, a senior.

More proof? Off in the distance, we see students walking our direction, as if migrating towards the small white building where Boyd's offering a form of education unlike any other private school in Tennessee.  

It's a free period and 10 students have stopped by. They bunny-cuddle and  tell jokes and talk about the next day's field trip to Tennessee Tech, where they'll learn how to judge show horses.

"Any free time I have, I come in here," said Pearson Hopper, a senior.

Hold up. During your free period?

"Yes. I love it here."

In 2018, Boyd Buchanan - which promises a "loving, Christian-centered education" on its Brainerd campus - was awarded a Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter.

"We’re the first private school with an FFA program approved in the state of Tennessee," Melissa said.

Future Farmers of America (FFA) was founded in 1928 to prepare future leaders for what FFA calls the science, business, technology and art of agriculture. Today, FFA has more than 200 chapters across Tennessee, but, Boyd was Tennessee's first private school chapter, Melissa proudly says.

Since Boyd's FFA chapter began, the school also embraced agriculture as a necessary part of a 21st-century curriculum, implementing agriculture classes that pair with school clubs and organizations.

There's a rigorous, engaging curriculum that mixes business with biology with agriculture with leadership skills. The syllabus topic list alone is five pages.

The agriculture classes meet three times a week, with the FFA chapter  during can-we-stay free periods. Nearly 80 Boyd students are involved in one or both.

"It's applied science," said Owens. "It's not just for country boys and country girls."

They learn agriculture is more than planting; it's business. Many Boyd students head into college with plans for ag-careers.

Students who've never worn boots or held a shovel are now running tillers, sowing cosmos seeds, checking the apiary, building duck boxes, new garden beds and business plans.

Every student we spoke with echoed the same thing: "it's hands-on. We love it."

Through FFA and agriculture classes, Boyd's transforming the way it educates.

"We are busting full," said Melissa. "We’ve got more kids signed up than we can take."

She calls it a "heritage lifestyle" curriculum. If Genesis teaches that we are dust-returning-to-dust, then, students need to remember and reacquaint themselves with an old friend:

Dust. Dirt. Soil. The ground beneath them.

"We are leaning into the spiritual practice of being in nature," she said. "It gives us wisdom and we discern things for ourselves people knew years ago."

"It answers this most basic desire that many of us don't know we have," she continued. "To be outside and interact with the elements. To get our hands in the dirt, one of the most important elements on earth."

It all began with a vision.

Two visions, actually.

Years ago, Melissa - who graduated Boyd in '91 - had a vision of a farm on the 65-acre campus, with its marshes, ponds, grasslands and Christian ethics.

"I have always seen it," she said. "I have always known this is the perfect place to practice regenerative sustainable farming."

Melissa, grew up farming; she and her dad, an ex-metal worker and Korean vet, would spend hours together, working the soil, building things, husbanding animals, hands in the dirt, hearts full. They still work together, prepping for much of the classes and FFA.

She returned to Boyd to teach science; several years ago, Noah Houston enrolled at Boyd.

He had a similar vision.

"I was born into it," he said. "There's a picture of me as a five-year-old holding a duck taller than me."

His parents - Rhey and Jennifer - come from farming, hunting and FFA backgrounds; today, they're involved in real estate and land conservation, with friends across the state, from hunters to farmers to politicians.

"Noah will end up being some sort of statesman. He’s worked so hard. He’s got an old soul. He’s so wise," said Melissa.

In middle school, Noah wanted to enroll in Boyd because of its turf-football field. To convince his parents, he even added this promise:

I'll pay for it, he said.

"I bred Goldendoodles ... and college education. (Noah's a freshman at Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville.)‍

He's also one of the most stirring young evangelists for agriculture and education, says things that rouse the heart. Noah understands and articulates  what students from coast to coast wish teachers knew:

"We learn best by doing."

In 2014, the school launched its first agriculture classes while submitting an FFA chapter application.

"Hundreds of students and families have made and continue to make a contribution to this legacy story," Melissa said.

Yet, in the beginning, it took time. ("We waited patiently on the Lord," said Melissa.) For many, the notion of agriculture was antiquated. Much of the work was undoing misperception.

"People don't understand agriculture," Noah said. "It’s not just soybeans and corn."

We're standing in the Boyd garden; he points to a fencepost.

"That post? Somebody planted a seed that grew into a tree. Somebody raised it for 15 years. Somebody then harvested the tree. Another company cut the tree. Another saw-milled the tree. Treated it. Shipped it to Ace and then Tom Glenn sold it."

"That’s agriculture."

In 2018, Noah's dad, Rhey, helped facilitate the formation of Boyd's FFA chapter. It was a pioneering moment, placing Boyd and its new FFA chapter at the top among private schools in the city and state.

Noah envisions a day when as many graduating seniors earn ag-scholarships as athletic-based ones for college.

"This opens so many doors," he said. "This program changes people’s lives. We’ve had students who have nothing to do with farming now go to school at major universities on their ag campus."

"Want to be a veterinarian? Come here. Want to be a florist? come here. Want to be a soil scientist? Corn farmer? Come here."

"Anything you do in the ag-field is helping somebody. There is no meaningless soul draining work. Agriculturalists take the task of feeding the world head on."

It was the honey that did it.

That's when Dylan Meitzler, a Boyd senior, really fell in love with these classes.

"The honey? Seeing those bees? Tasting that honey?" he said. "We got to see the productivity of our work."

When students are bound to desks and classrooms, lecture-lessons on bees and honey aren't real. It's all theory, pages in a book. The buzz becomes zzzz. As Noah said: "There is a difference between knowing how to do it and actually doing it."

But at Boyd? The hive becomes the classroom. The hands-in-dirt work is the class.

"I started a garden because of this class," said TJ Rodgers, a junior. "Buttermilk squash, carrots. I started some peas. Summer basil, tomatoes and strawberries."

Two years ago? He'd never planted anything.

"I didn't realize how overlooked agriculture is," he said. Today, with everything he eats, he considers: how was it grown?

Now, he has a new ethic.  

"Growing our own food and not getting it from the grocery store," he said. "It was another thing that flipped the switch."

Boyd's preparing raised beds for first-graders to grow radishes and lettuce. Upperclassmen have started methodology trials for flowers, hoping to create a for-profit flower business, with zinnias and cosmos.

"I was sitting in class and Ms. Owens showed me how to plant all these flowers," said Garrett Sherman, a junior. "I thought: that's really cool."

You can make a lot of money, she said. You should look into that.

"And I did," he said. "It seems a lot more for me than a desk job or sitting at a counter."

His grandparents own a cattle farm in Michigan. Soon, he'll head to college with a plan.

"I can go help my grandparents farm and make a business," he said.

Boyd students have grown pumpkins, heirloom squash and corn. They're making plans for cool-bot storage and small animals and a crabapple orchard.

They've equipped a chicken tractor with solar panels for longer-season egg laying. Adopted a TVA-idea on composting coffee grounds for chicken feed.

"When I get a house when I’m older, I want to plant a garden because of this class," said Brodie Lowe, a senior, who then said what a dozen others did:

"It's hands-on. I learn more stuff by doing. I’d rather be outside than sit at a desk and taking notes."

Eshan Patel, a sophomore, agreed. He helped create Jellybean Bunny Rescue - "the only bunny rescue in Chattanooga," he said - and said FFA has taught him about "agriculture and animals."

"It's made me curious about how the world works," said Braden Deal, a senior. "It's really opened my mind to how specific you can get a job."

"It gives me a calming hour," said can-we-stay?-sophomore Rebecca Clemons. "When I come to this class, I don't have stress."

She and Ericka Rios walked us into the greenhouse, giving play-by-play on starting seeds and transplants. (Boyd students follow closely the work of Floret Flowers in Washington.)

We got the dirt out of the potting soil and put it here ... then, we got it wet so it would stick together and so seeds wouldn't dry out ... we use ½ of our vermiculite, which we put on top ... it is easier for seed to come up through this.

The FFA chapter is student-led; they learn how to properly run meetings and manage rules of order.  They enter the annual state-wide Ag-Olympics: hay bale-toss, skid steer driving, lassoing. Apparently, Boyd students are the kings and queens of the tractor-pull.

"We killed it," said Melissa.

Melissa likes to call it "both-and" education. Both academic and experiential. Both rigorous and healing. Both timeless and timely.

"It revitalizes you," she said. "It is inclusive. Hands-on. There is no bad element. It is so very spiritual."

"There's a place here for everybody," said Noah.

They both thought back to a day when students were wading through the marsh, checking duck boxes, wet and muddy ... and laughing.

"They were just giddy," Melissa said. "It was so right, so pure. It's just happiness."

In Genesis, very clear instructions are offered; it is perhaps the very first lesson given to humanity.

Steward the Earth. Care for it. Know it.

"The first power given to us was to honor Creation," Melissa said.

Then, the two visionaries reflected on the goodness of God and what happens when we remember the ground beneath us.

"These are the most holistic days when we can belly laugh and have fun and see the beauty and treasures God has given us and learn from their cycles," Melissa said. "It mirrors life."

"I firmly believe we are hardwired by God to reconnect with nature," Noah responded. "Adam and Eve came from the dirt. There’s nothing more rewarding."

As if giving thanks over the largest, most beautiful of meals, Melissa smiled, adding one more word - the perfect word - to their conversation.  

"Amen."

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