Blinn Agricultural Mechanics Projects Show to feature students' imaginations

Competition will be held April 24 at Rankin Agricultural Complex on Brenham Campus

April 8, 2024

The annual Blinn College District Ag Mechanics Projects Show features a lot of imagination, says Ben Burroughs.

A Blinn Agricultural Sciences professor who has been superintendent of the show since 2019, Burroughs said he is continually amazed by the projects that FFA and 4-H members from across the State of Texas bring to the contest.

“I tell my students in the ag construction class that your limitation is your imagination. That’s really the limiting factor, how imaginative you can be,” he said. “These kids that bring their projects to the contest, their imagination runs wild. Every year, someone is trying to up the ante, trying to make something a little better, adding hydraulics, adding pneumatics, adding some kind of rotation to whatever it might be. It’s always neat to see the innovations that the students come up with.”

This year’s contest will be held Wednesday, April 24, at the W.J. “Bill” Rankin Agricultural Complex at 1409 Old Mill Creek Road on the Blinn-Brenham Campus (map) . It is open to FFA students and 4-H members.

Judging will begin at 10 a.m. and exhibits will be open for public viewing at that time. The early entry deadline is Friday, April 12. Late registration closes at noon on April 23. High school students register at www.judgingcard.com/Registration/Info.aspx?ID=17370. 4-H members can email [email protected] for registration forms.

Burroughs said he expects this year’s show to surpass 200 entries once again after the 2023 contest received 236. Along with the projects, 60 students have signed up for the welding contest and more than 70 are entered in the cutting torch competition.

Approximately 30 volunteers are helping with the contest and more than 60 judges have been tabbed to select winning projects.

Among the most popular projects are antique tractors that have been painstakingly restored to mint condition.

“Sometimes those kids spend a thousand hours restoring those tractors,” said Burroughs. Some of the projects that the kids build have over a thousand hours in them as well.”

More information is available by contacting Burroughs at [email protected] or calling 979-830-4266.

Blinn’s Agricultural Sciences Program is approximately four times the size of any other two-year agricultural program in the state and is based at the W.J. “Bill” Rankin Agricultural Complex on the Blinn-Brenham Campus. For more information, visit www.blinn.edu/agricultural-sciences.