At Sonoma Valley High School, a fifteen-year-old chose the engine shop over the newsroom - and started fixing her family's farm equipment.
Featuring Annie N.
Annie has a look of intense concentration on her face. Peering into the depths of a piece of machinery with the help of a flashlight held by a fellow student, she cranks an unseen part into place, intent on reassembling the four-stroke combustion engine at her work station.
She is the only girl in the class.
Annie is fifteen, and when she registered for electives she had a choice: newspaper, or Power Mechanics. She picked the engine shop.
"I'm involved in a lot of Agriculture classes already, so I thought I'd take one more," she says. "I thought I'd get to learn something new, and it would be a fun experience."
Power Mechanics is one of many electives in Sonoma Valley High School's Agriculture Academy, a career pathway that lets students build toward an industry while they're still in high school. The class covers the basics of engine design, repair, and maintenance — technical skills that transfer directly to the agriculture industry, taught the way the work actually happens: hands on the equipment.
Walking into that shop as the youngest student and the only girl took some adjusting.
"It's a little different," Annie says. "When I first started the class I was really quiet and didn't talk to anyone because they were older and felt intimidating." She laughs, reflecting on those first days. "I have some friends in here now, I got used to them, they're all really funny and pretty nice, so it's easier now."
What she's learned in the shop didn't stay in the shop. Asked how she's applying her new skills, she smiles broadly.
"Right now I'm repairing my dad's lawn mower."
Annie's family owns a dairy and a vineyard. Beyond regular lawn maintenance, there is always farm equipment that needs repair — and now there's another person in the household who knows how to do it. Annie is glad she can help with those chores, and it sounds like her father is too.
"He thinks it's pretty cool," she says, "and he's excited that he can talk to me about some of this stuff."
Engine maintenance is one piece of a larger plan. Annie intends to stay in the family business. She's already enrolled in Plant and Soil Science and plans to take a viticulture class soon - building, class by class, the range of skills it takes to run a working farm.
She's fifteen, and she's already the person her dad talks shop with.
