The Natural Farmer · Fall 2014: Farming as Therapy

Yes, it is therapeutic for at least certain people to farm. It has become crystal clear to me, as one of those “earth types” (according to five element acupuncture system), that farming is how I regain balance, feed my soul and my psyche, get my exercise, my vitamin D, build and enhance my human, plant and animal relationships, and get that bonus of feeding the bodies of me, my family, our staff, and all of our customers. I knew at a very young age that being in the soil was what “fed” me like nothing else. My fondest and most centered memories go back to spending long summer days with my brother Tom and my sister Sue at our creek on our farm in Illinois, playing in the mud. It is interesting that today the three of us are still avid farmers or gardeners, and still get this immense pleasure from working in the soil.

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“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” -Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

The perfect broccoli!

I know this may be a difficult concept to grasp if the potato beetles have completely overrun your crop this year, but I think the goal of most therapy is to inspire hope. If farming does indeed provide this hope, why not try to foster its growth within an agricultural environment? Enter Horticultural Therapy.

What is Horticultural Therapy

To fully understand this concept, we need to have a proper understanding of what the word “therapy” means. “Farming,” I would assume, is pretty self-explanatory: Weeding, mulching, sowing, and reaping the benefits of your hard earned harvest. So how does “therapy” fit into this paradigm? I think we can all safely agree on a definition that refers to efforts which are intended to relieve, and if we’re lucky, even heal a person. It seems strange that frustrations, like weeds overtaking your carrots, again, can be helpful to someone who is struggling with depression. Horticultural therapy attempts to use even those experiences for the benefit of the individual. [Read more…]

“The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.” – John Ruskin

In the center of Vermont, high in the mountains just a few miles north of the tip of the Green Mountain National Forest, sits a beautiful spring-fed lake. It is not reachable by road and has thus remained rustic and primitive, even by Vermont standards. It does, however, sit right along the Appalachian Trail.

An early photo of Elizabeth and Wayne Sercka with “the boys”

So it was that Wayne and Elizabeth Sarka discovered it. Wayne was from a large Vermont family and had worked during and after World War One with shell-shocked soldiers. Elizabeth was from a prominent Manhattan family and had experience with charitable and non-profit work. They married in the late 1920s and honeymooned by hiking the Long Trail in Vermont.

‘’We … completely lost our hearts to the area,” wrote Elizabeth later. “The land was going for a song, so we bought a stretch of it with the idea of having a summer place.’’ That was in 1932, at the bottom of the depression. That first summer the couple brought boys up from the settlement house they were working with in Manhattan to help clear land, build roads and repair buildings. Afternoons they left for recreational activities. [Read more…]

A Green Chimneys student learns to shear a llama

Bella, a 3-year-old heifer being raised as a pet in Pennsylvania, was sweet, but unaware of her own size. Rubbing her head on and jumping on people became a problem as she grew, and she was eventually donated to Green Chimneys Farm and Wildlife Center in Brewster, NY. Around the same time, a teenage student began at Green Chimneys educational program, and was testing boundaries constantly with adults and peers. He seemed to need a challenge, so Bella and the student were matched to work with each other. The student was coached about handling her gently but firmly. Bella pushed the student, the student learned how it feels to be tested, and the student learned to respond in a way that resulted in a more positive interaction with Bella. [Read more…]

San Quentin, what good do you think you do?
Do you think I’ll be different when you’re through?
You bent my heart and mind and you may my soul,
And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.
May your walls fall and may I live to tell.
May all the world forget you ever stood.
And may all the world regret you did no good.
— Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash sang these lyrics to a live crowd behind walls at San Quentin Prison in 1962. The roar of approval from the crowd of inmates on that day needs little explanation. Life in this Northern California prison typified the inmate experience as an egregious stint in an unforgiving human warehouse—a system bent on punishment rather than any form of rehabilitation, and one, as stated by the former head of a Colorado prison, “lacking in any human decency or dignity.” For inmates paroled or released, the best they could expect was a marginalized role in society. As felons they had lost the opportunity to vote, serve on juries, or acquire government employment; the stigma and trauma of time served would follow them for life. Most inmates left prison harder, angrier, and less willing or able to assimilate in society. “What is served by the failure of the prison?” asked Michel Foucault in 1979 (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, page 272, Knopf Doubleday, New York, 1979).
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This is my brother in the barn, how he always was.

November 10, 2006 was a beautiful fall day. I had finished my afternoon chores early so I hung Christmas lights on my house. I was set to move in the next day. All summer my family and I had been renovating the house that had been my Grandpa Dewey’s, and were proud of the work we had accomplished. Especially my brother Tom.

We had both taken over the family dairy farm from my dad and uncle. It’s been in the family since 1817. He had just finished delivering a load of green chop for my cows and we were getting ready to go up to our mom’s for supper. On the way we stopped to let his cows across the road.
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