Fair Grove junior Lucas Crutcher is an award winner with Future Farmers of America, a member of Future business leaders of America, on the student council, and is a lineman for the football team.
And that crazy schedule begins as soon as he gets out of bed in the morning.
“I have to feed everything in the morning,” Crutcher said, “I have five different pens that we feed.”
Crutcher’s father is the FFA teacher at Fair Grove high school and has to get to work early. So the family farm is in the hands of Lucas in the morning.
“Each pin gets its own separate mix of feed so I have to go through that and make sure everything is right and everything is kind of running good before I leave for school,” Crutcher said. “Not many kids are in charge of 20 cows, 30 cows livelihood.”
“Kind of told him that the animals are dependent on you,” Lucas’ father, Matt Crutcher said. “I can go get a drink, you can go get a drink, that animal can’t go get a drink.”
Then once Lucas gets to school he has football, the student council and FFA to balance.
“You just kind of have to block out times for your activities everyday,” Crutcher said. “You aren’t going to have time for every club everyday.”
After school he hits the football field to hit some players and no doubt blow off some steam from constantly going going going.
“I do get stressed out I am not going to lie yes sir. It gets pretty stressful,” Lucas said.
“He is a super hard worker,” his father said.
Which Matt says is an important life lesson that his busy schedule teaches him.
“Hopefully as he gets older it helps him handle the stress,” Matt said. “It makes him have responsibilities and have a good work ethic. Those are the three big things we would like him to get out of doing all of this.”
Then on the weekends, Lucas gets to show his cattle and see his hard work and busy schedule pay off.
“I get to meet a lot of new people,” Crutcher said. “A lot of my friends are people I’ve met while showing cattle ​and just feel more of a sense of victory knowing that you have worked that calf and know how much hours you spent.”
