You want us to do what?

Art Lafranchi's dairy -- plus a certain procedure involving a cow and a long plastic glove -- has become an annual rite of passage for student leaders around Santa Rosa.

"It was just like warm and really squishy," said Stephen Martinez, a Maria Carrillo High School junior, after placing his arm into the backside of one of Lafranchi's Holsteins. "And it contracted a lot. It was sucking me in."

While most of Sonoma County's high school students were sitting at their desks Monday morning, Martinez and 40 other teens went to Lafranchi's Piner Road dairy to experience what it would feel like to artificially inseminate a cow. The youths squealed and made faces as they watched their peers approach four seemingly unflappable black-and-white bovines, their heads held tight between metal bars.

The students, all 11th-graders, belong to Tomorrow's Leaders Today, a community education and leadership training program.

Monday was the first of eight all-day field trips where the teens will learn about their community by exploring such spheres as agriculture, government, criminal justice, media, health care, social service and tourism. The days typically include speakers and tours.

The program, patterned after the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce's adult leadership program, has existed for 17 years and now offers similar schedules for students in the south and north ends of the county. This year the organization enrolled 142 juniors from both the county's public and private schools.

For the Santa Rosa students, Lafranchi's dairy often becomes the year's most striking exploit, as well as the one activity that other teens likely have heard about from participants of Tomorrow's Leaders Today.

"The first thing they said is 'We got to stick our hands up a cow,' " Caitlin Kirkpatrick of Santa Rosa High said of her conversations with older students who had been through the program. "I definitely would have regretted it if I didn't do it."

Julee Cole, the program's executive director, said one graduate who went on to Stanford University wrote his college admission essay about his encounter with one of Lafranchi's cows.

By placing their hands up the cows' rectums, the students can feel the animal's nearby reproductive organs, including the cervix, said farm manager Carlos Soria. He showed the students the artificial insemination, or AI gun, a long, thin plunger in which he would place a small tube filled with bull semen. With one hand inside the cow, Soria with the other hand could insert the gun into the cow's reproductive tract.

Lafranchi, an attorney and dairyman who also hosts tours for the chamber and the county Farm Bureau, said he enjoys letting the students experience a dairy operation.

On Monday the teens watched some of the dairy's 500 mature cows at the milking machines. They petted calves in their plastic hutches and pens, looked at a field of ripening corn as Canada geese flew overhead, and smelled the manure pond that Lafranchi jokingly called part of the "used food department."

Lafranchi acknowledged he also enjoys watching the students after they don the arm-length plastic gloves.

"The faces are just priceless," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com.