WEST POINT — West Point High School’s most recent addition — a climate-controlled, fully functional livestock barn — will be instrumental in reducing barriers between students and the world of agriculture.

A common trope about American high schools is that students often find themselves in one of several well-known cliques. There are athletes, intellectuals, rebels and a final default category for pretty much everybody else.

Sabrina Hudson knew from her own experiences how important it can be for students to find a group of like-minded peers and to develop a sense of purpose for their future.

Both Hudson and her husband, Adam grew up on farms and have dedicated their adult lives to teaching younger generations about the history and importance of agriculture at the Peinhardt Living History Farm. Hudson passed those interests down to her daughter, but said that it did little to make assimilating to a new school any easier when she transferred to West Point as an 8th-grader in 2019.

“She was a really shy kid, and she was just kind of lost. She just kind of fell into the holes,” Hudson said. “We just saw a great need in kids that weren’t into sports or in the band or anything like that, and we wanted them to have something.”

Even in areas deeply rooted in their agricultural communities, it can be difficult for students who have similar interests to find each other in schools without a fully developed program. Which is why West Point agriscience teacher and FFA sponsor Ethan Lake has seen the positive impact that raising animals can have on students and has made growing the livestock showing program one of his top priorities.

“I think there is a lot of value in livestock projects. I’ve seen it in my life, and I see it in students,” Lake said. “It’s always been a dream of mine to have a place where live animals can be.”

Even for highly interested students, Lake said recruitment for such an intensive of a program as livestock showing can be difficult. Current West Point FFA president Addy Gutherie said she has wanted to show livestock competitively since she became a member during her freshman year, but has always lacked the resources to do so. During a livestock show, animals are judged on their conformation, muscling and overall quality. This means they are usually selected as babies and carefully raised in a way that accentuates those qualities. But Lake said the homes of many students simply lack the space and facilities to raise livestock.

“Facilities have always been the biggest barrier to entry when it comes to livestock showing,” Lake said.

The program did experience a temporary boom when Lake was able to arrange a partnership with the owner of an adjacent property to allow students to house animals in their barn. During that time as many as 15 students were actively showing a variety of animal species at one time. Inversely, when the school lost access to that resource, the number of students signing up to show livestock quickly dwindled.

The last student involved in the program graduated at the end of the 2024 school year.

This is why when Hudson and a small, but dedicated group of West Point alumni came together in 2019, they made constructing an on-campus livestock barn one of their earliest goals.

The group gathered the majority of supplies needed for the project and arranged its construction. Lake said excess grant funds which had been allocated for career tech. programs in the Cullman County school district carried the project to the finish line, and the barn was officially unveiled during a school board meeting in November 2024.

Lake said that when students purchase baby lambs or goats this coming spring, they will be able to house and tend to the animals in the barn. Because she will be graduating at the end of the year, Gutherie was understandably disappointed in not being able to take advantage of the program’s new resource. However, this was overshadowed by her enthusiasm for the opportunities the facility will create for up-and-coming generations of West Point students.

“I wish we would have had this when I was younger so that I could have started showing,” Gutherie said. “I’m very excited for the younger students because they will be getting an opportunity that I didn’t get and I hope more people get involved because of it.”

Hudson said Gutherie hit the nail on the head and said her goal has always been to offer future generations the opportunities and resources she wished she had been given as a student.

“I think we’ll be able to help a lot of kids that want to be able to do this. It will give them a purpose to feed and have contact with that animal. I think this will be a great resource,” Hudson said.

Patrick Camp may be reached by email at patrick.camp@cullmantimes.com or by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 238.