CPI students runners-up at ag expo

Joe Luther said he’s a lucky guy.

The horticulture and landscape instructor at Central Pennsylvania Institute of Science and Technology attributed the second-place title from The Big E earlier this month to the students he teaches.

“I’m just lucky,” he said. “The kids just kind of follow the lead and bring in a lot of success.”

Luther and eight CPI students were runners-up for a landscape and hardscape fixture they designed and built at the Eastern States Expo, otherwise known as The Big E, in Massachusetts.

It’s a regional ag fair that, this year, hosted teams from schools in 20 states.

The CPI students also won first place in the nonliving category for the hardscape part of the project.

CPI students were eligible to showcase their work in the regional show because they won at the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January.

Luther said this year’s theme was to design a landscape and hardscape piece that mimicked something found in 1916.

The goal, he added, was to keep it simple, yet formal.

“They looked at a couple different designs, played around with how to build it and added things like a water feature,” Luther said.

The group drove to the fair in Massachusetts on Sept. 14, built the model on Sept. 15, and was judged the following day.

“It probably took five or six hours to build,” senior Levi Bisel, of the Bald Eagle Area School District, said.

But they faced some challenges, including something the students said originally wasn’t right with the water fixture.

“When we got there, some of the measurements were off, so we needed to rethink some of the work,” junior Abbey Bruni, of the Bellefonte Area School District, said. “In a way it was a good thing because it gave us real world problems we needed to fix. It was kind of like being on the job.”

And the students decided to exchange the original water fixture with one, they said, was more fitting for a scape found 100 years ago.

Senior Holden Price, of BEA, said the original fountain was black with a formation that looked like stacked pots. The replacement fountain was a more traditional three-level bird bath.

“It was more fitting for the theme,” Price said.

About 15 students in Luther’s class are working on a hardscape/landscape design for the state farm show scheduled Jan. 7 to 14 in Harrisburg.

The challengeis to build a deer-resistant landscape.

While the final design is up in the air, Luther said it’s being crafted with a feminine flair.

“This is the first year I have a really female-dominated class,” Luther said. “It’s great to see that in a male-dominated field,” Luther said. “They’re bringing a different perspective. They look at one angle and then look at another and then come together. The guys will just go and build. It’s just a different process, but it’s how they blend to work together that works really well.”

This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 6:12 PM with the headline "CPI students runners-up at ag expo."