By Mike Orso
Get to Know Leah Hossfeld
1. Favorite food: Baked potato
2. Favorite movie or TV Show: “Yellowstone”
3. Favorite musician or entertainer: Taylor Swift
4: Favorite class I took in college: Animal Science
5. If I wasn’t teaching, I’d be: Referee for the Puppy Bowl
A small, rectangular plaque hangs on the wall behind Mrs. Hossfeld’s classroom desk at Harvard High School with the words, “My Barn – My Rules” on top of each other. Perhaps the subtle, yet firm message helps set ground rules for students of the school’s sole agriculture teacher, in a classroom that, similar to many barns, includes live animals.
“I get told that I’m not like a traditional teacher,” said Leah Hossfeld, 35, who instructs at the same high school she graduated from 17 years ago. “I don’t know if it’s because I never went to school to be a traditional teacher or if it’s the nature of the program in general.”
Hossfeld leads one of three agricultural-related curriculums in McHenry County high schools. A local farm kid, she heeded the call in 2013 when the community where she grew up needed someone new to guide the same program she took advantage of when she went to Harvard High.
“I didn’t go to school to be a teacher,” said Hossfeld, who achieved a bachelor’s degree in agricultural leadership earlier that same year from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). “I got a call that they really needed a teacher here, so I came here.”
She’s glad she did, and apparently the school and community are too. Close to 100 of the school’s approximately 700 teen-aged students take advantage of her classes that include Animal Science, Biology in Agriculture, Horticulture, Introduction to Agriculture, Landscaping, and Supervised Agricultural Experience.
“It’s a lot of classes, a lot of prep, like six different presentations a day, if you really think of it,” said Hossfeld, who then achieved a master’s degree in agricultural education from UIUC in 2021. “You get good at it and I get to use the same stuff year after year. I always make it better.”
Hossfeld grew up in rural Harvard on a family farm that included raising dairy heifer replacement cows and growing corn and soybeans. She participated in 4H and the local chapter of the National FFA Organization, which she now advises in her position at the high school. Earlier this year, she received the Illinois FFA Section 6 Golden Owl Award for “agricultural educators who devote countless hours, and often their own resources, to positively impact the lives of their students.”
Hossfeld’s FFA group also receives significant support from Harvard High alumni, many who took advantage of its ag-related courses and participated in FFA when they were in school. In fact, the FFA alumni group farms land owned by School District 50 not far from the high school campus. Proceeds from crops raised help support the chapter and school ag programs.
“The school rents them 38 acres, they farm it for us,” said Hossfeld. “We get to use that money. They are like our booster club that fund most of our events.”
The FFA chapter at Harvard and ones at schools in Alden-Hebron and Marengo also receive support from the McHenry County Farm Bureau (MCFB). The organization helps fund popular field trips such as a recent one to Midwest Trading/Midwest Ground Covers in St. Charles, and others.
“Every other year, they sponsor us to go to the Farm Progress Show (in Decatur),” said Hossfeld, who, since 2016, serves as a volunteer member of the MCFB board of directors. “They do their Ag Acquaintance Day trip,” which allows county high school students to visit farms and other agricultural businesses in Illinois and Wisconsin.
One of Hossfeld’s former students now practices veterinary medicine, and at least two have achieved advanced degrees to be agricultural high school teachers like her. While teaching may not have been the career she originally envisioned, the very nature of it allows her to put her agricultural leadership skills to work in many different ways.
“The first two years were hard, but I made it,” she said. “I thought I would do it for a year and I just haven’t left. It’s a fun job. It’s always something new and we’re always doing something different.”
Mrs. Leah Hossfeld at her classroom desk in Harvard High School in the northern part of McHenry County. The rectangular plaque that says, “My barn – My rules” hangs at right. Hossfeld graduated from Harvard High in 2009. She holds advanced degrees in agricultural leadership and agricultural education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Leah Hossfeld oversees an active FFA chapter at Harvard High School with close to 70 students participating. “I’m always hounding them to get their college applications in, get things actually done, jobs, telling them that they don’t have to go to college, there are other routes,” said Hossfeld.
Leah Hossfeld and her students at Harvard High School will hold a student-grown fruit, vegetable and flower plant sale May 7-8 at the school. “I like going into the greenhouse. It’s easy to lesson-plan. There’s always something to do. There’s always something to clean, transplanting, making things look nice. The sale is pretty fun. The kids get really into it. We sell out every year.”
Leah Hossfeld, Harvard High School agriculture teacher and MCFB board member, her husband Alex and their two children, Barrett, 6 and Wyatt, 4 live in Woodstock. Alex farms with Leah’s father Dennis Wilkening, who, like her, has served on the McHenry County Farm Bureau board of directors. (Hossfeld family photo)