How It Works &ARM 7ORK 4HERAPY Therapeutic, service-oriented agricultural employment immerses a diverse group of at-risk teenagers in dynamic community farms or gardens. Together each growing season, they help work the land, cultivate high-quality local organic produce, and feed those in need.

Background

F

arm work therapy combines elements of work therapy, wilderness therapy, and community service. Youth participants learn responsibility and a sense of purpose, connect with the specific natural

environment of a farm and with each other, and nourish fellow community

GROWING A GARDEN CITY

members with the literal fruits and vegetables of their labors.

166

The Garden City Harvest Youth Harvest Program specifically targets at-risk high school students for this potentially transformative experience.

Participants Along with an assistant, the Youth Harvest director—a professional therapist with farm work experience—employs approximately five high school students a year. Four are referred to the program by the local youth drug court. The fifth is a challenged teenager—for example, a longtime youth group home resident or therapy client—who chooses to join the program, and who organizers believe will especially benefit from a season’s work on the farm. The teenagers are paid and may receive high school class credit.

Work Therapy Youth Harvest begins in April when participants first arrive after school at the PEAS Farm, trek across the muddy fields to the greenhouse, and begin mixing potting soil, planting seeds, and learning what it takes to be a part of a working community farm. By the time summer starts and school ends, the teens have settled into a daily rhythm with the larger adult farm community, working in the fields with university students and staff in the morning and then sharing a family-style lunch together with them around the long wooden table in the PEAS Farm barn. As the summer progresses, the teens help weed, water, and nurture acres of plants to maturity, then harvest and deliver the abundance of vegetables to the Missoula Food Bank and organize it attractively for pickup by CSA members. Twice a week, they travel the city in a refurbished former delivery van, operating a subsidized farmers’ market—called Mobile Market—for low-income, often homebound, seniors, military veterans, and the developmentally disabled. While the corn is thinned or the squash weeded, teens and staff address daily to the recovery from the loss of a boyfriend or the perceived insensitivity of a parent. Once a week, participants come together as a group to discuss ongoing challenges

HOW IT WOR KS

concerns from punctuality and the understanding and development of a work ethic

167

on and off the farm. The goal is to provide a safe, positive experience of problemsolving, self-reflection, and engagement with others. A new school year begins near the height of the harvest, and the teens’ service continues several days a week after classes. “The familiarity of the work and place eases them back into themselves again after a day involved in tasks that make less immediate sense,” says Youth Harvest founder Tim Ballard. “We tossed pumpkins to one another across the field and gently into the back of the idle truck. We pulled armloads of onions out of the soil and hauled them into the loft of the barn, hanging them from the rafters on long lines of twine to dry for storage. We dug in search of potatoes and spaded hundreds of pounds of carrots.” The weekend before Halloween the teens set out straw bales and pile them with pumpkins. An old cider press is positioned GROWING A GARDEN CITY

alongside boxes of gleaned valley apples.

168

Soon families arrive to carve pumpkins,

Gathering fresh basil for customers of the Youth Harvest Mobile Market

»

169

press and drink cider, and warm themselves around the fire. Bare fields mean work is done for another season. In the end, the teens walk away with “more than a wage, more than school credit,” says Ballard. “What this is for each will still be growing in them long after we begin again in the spring with the next crew of young people.”

Before and After Farm work is hard, and adjudicated teenagers in particular may accept the employment only as an alternative to strictly punitive measures and traditional therapy. For these reasons, program leaders expect resistance and plan appropriate responses. Soon, however, the immediacy of a working farm’s demands engages almost everyone. Working side by side with committed college students inspires the teenagers to be their best. In turn, the older—but still young—men and women invest themselves in their adolescent colleagues. All teenagers are, in a sense, “at risk.” As ever, however, the greater the risk, the greater the possibility of reward. Community outreach efforts like the Mobile Market extend new relationships and deepen teens’ appreciation that they’re providing a vital service to the entire city.

Healing Ties Youth Harvest relies on the partnership of other innovative local organizations. GROWING A GARDEN CITY

The area youth drug court, human resource council, and alternative high school all

170

collaborated with Garden City Harvest to create the program, and continue to help fund, operate, and otherwise support Youth Harvest, along with the City of Missoula, the University of Montana, Missoula Aging Services, the Missoula Food Bank, and generous local individuals, businesses, and private foundations.

Additional Resources The Food Project, also mentioned in Community Education, page 136, offers a national model of engaging young people in personal and social change through sustainable agriculture, and serves as a resource center for organizations and individuals worldwide. As well as materials available through its website (http:// thefoodproject.org), its publication Growing Together: A Guide for Building Inspired, Diverse, and Productive Youth Communities advises how to make work meaningful, how to share and uphold standards through a “straight talk” process, and offers methods of interactive teaching and learning. Included are close to 100 specific games, activities, workshops, and team-building exercises. See Also Student Farm 44

HOW IT WOR KS

Community Outreach 206

171