ARLINGTON — At a time when many high-schoolers were enjoying the first day of their three-day weekend, Tyson Kuntz was hard at work.

The FFA member slammed his hoe against the soft, grassy sod, chipping away the top level of soil from what will someday soon be a small garden.

“I just wanted to help out on my day off,” Kuntz said.

Kuntz was one of about 10 FFA students from Arlington High School who spent their day off helping remove grass and soil from Regency Care Center’s residential garden.

Regency activity director Molly Weiland said the center’s handful of resident gardeners were interested in expanding their existing garden, so Weiland contacted FFA advisor Tracy Brown at the high school.

“They didn’t have enough space and they wanted more room,” Weiland said. “Most of our people here are in wheelchairs and aren’t able to do it themselves.”

Leah Peek, the school’s FFA President, spent much of the morning shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows and organizing the transportation effort to get the old soil off Regency’s property.

Students dug up the dirt, loaded it into a truck and drove it to the high school’s farm on SR 530.

Arlington School District students had Friday, Oct. 9, off from school because of an in-service day.

“If we would have done this on the weekend, kids would probably have been busy,” Peek said. “Since we weren’t at school, it was easier to get people here.”

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