FOOD & FARMING

VETERANS CAREER FAIR

March 5, 2010 * 9 AM – 4 PM

Veterans Memorial Building

1351 Maple Avenue, Santa Rosa

Event Coordinator: Linda Speel  -   linda (at) farmvetco.org

FOR MORE DETAILS, CLICK HERE

At the New Jersey Veterans Affairs Medical Center near Newark, there are vegetable gardens, cared for by patients who find the process of tending living plants for feeding others to be a healing way of interacting with the world. In this article from the New York Times, “After War, Finding Peace and Calm in a Garden,” reporter Peter Applebome describes how the idea of starting a gardening program came into being.

photo by Richard Perry/The New York Times

It began with Jan Zientek, who specializes in urban gardening with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension in Roseland, and Thurston Mangrum, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran, who was in a substance abuse treatment program at the medical center.

Five years ago, Mr. Mangrum took a course that Mr. Zientek taught to residents of the Newark Housing Authority and later joined its master gardener program.

Mr. Mangrum figured, even with severe limitations of space, why not do something similar at the medical center? The veterans did some landscaping and ground work and then began tilling 20-by-50-foot plots between the buildings that had been converted from grass to raised vegetable beds.

Over 1,000 pounds of vegetables were harvested this past summer, all given to vets at the center and to a cafe in town that caters to veterans. This alone would make the gardening worthwhile, but the opportunity to work in the garden brings other rewards.

For many of the veterans, the experience has been less about growing food and more about learning about themselves. So Mr. Mourning has felt a special kinship with Josh Urban, a 30-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who also suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He had also found himself isolated, unable to fully reintegrate into the world outside the war zone, until tilling the soil with his fellow veterans helped him make his peace with life back home.

Patrick Corcoran, who served with the Marines in Lebanon, said: “It just lowers the volume in my head. It allows me to think on a rational level.”

“Tanks to Tractors” at Toby’s Feed Barn in Pt. Reyes Station gave locals and others (including a reporter from L.A. and a sociologist from France) an opportunity to meet some of the young men and women who have returned home to pursue work on America’s farms.

The event was open for free admission, with good food and drink to enjoy while the speakers spoke and during the social times before and after. Here are some photos from the event:

A down-home venue in a beautiful location, Pt. Reyes Station.

Helga Hellburg, of the main sponsor Marin Organic, welcomes the audience.

Michael O'Gorman, Project Director of FVA, tells its history.

Wendy Johnson, Master Gardener of the Green Gulch Zen Center, prepares to pass around the bell to honor all veterans.

Amy Fairweather, Director of Swords to Plowshares and the Iraq Veteran Project expresses her gratitude for FVC's mission..

Mary Tillman, Gold Star Mother and author speaks in support of FVC.

Veteran and small scale vegetable farmer Matt McCue describes the unforgiving discipline of growing winter squash.

Jeremy Lopez expresses his gratitude to his vineyard mentor Joe Judge.

Wendy Johnson closes the meeting with a story about a pomegranate and its inspirational meaning to a soldier in combat.

n August, the Farmer-Veteran Coalition sponsored a “field trip” to a large organic vegetable farming operation in Baja, Mexico.

Vets visit an Ensenada, Mexico, tomato growhouse

Watch a slide show of the vets at school and play on the Baja coast.

Five Farms (National Public Radio) puts a personal face on the lives and livelihoods of farmers across the country. This episode, Succession, deals with older farmers retiring and giving up their farms to their children.

Jason Harvey has a vision for a just food system that stems from his childhood roots in East Oakland, California, where he learned from neighborhood elders how to grow pesticide-free produce. “I remember growing 10-15 pound cabbage heads with Mr. Howard Sneed over on 92nd and C Street, and how we would share this food and recipes with friends and neighbors. Those experiences let me know that we can feed our neighbors with food right from our own yards.”

Jason served our country in Kuwait. After his discharge from the Air Force, Jason returned to his roots. He noticed many of Oakland’s neighborhoods had an abundance of fast food restaurants and liquor stores but a scarcity of fresh produce and healthy foods. So he decided to help change that.

In 2005, Jason Harvey founded Oakland Food Connection (OFC). As the founder and director of OFC, Jason’s focus is to make sure residents learn about how to grow healthy food and how to maintain healthy lifestyles and strong community ties through food.

OFC’s methods for achieving these goals are thorough: expanding access to nutrition education for Oakland’s residents and establishing urban gardening programs. The Oakland Food Connection’s programs teach people to prepare healthy food, plan menus, and grow gardens. OFC garden programs assist in everything from planning to planting. These gardens are planted in schoolyards, empty lots, back yards and on rooftops. The garden work force consists of youth, ages 12-18, who hunger to “green” Oakland.

Jason’s ambitions for the programs are big; within 5 years he wants OFC to be feeding 1 to 4 percent of Oakland’s residents. His program has already grown by leaps and bounds and has had a positive impact on the community.

Download the Jason Harvey feature 8.27.09

Farmer Veteran Coalition would like to thank all of our donors for the support they have given our fledgling organization. As a result of their donations, we have been able to open our office in Davis. We finally have a place for people to come to us and ask questions and to hold meetings. A place where everyone feels welcome. We have made real progress in our work of connecting our returning veterans with opportunities for employment, training and places to heal on America’s farms. We have been able to help veterans like Sam, tanned and dirty from a long day’s work. Beaming with happiness when he hopped out of his farm pick-up truck. “I cannot thank you people enough,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the long rows of trellised grapes. “There is something really special about working out here.” Sam is twenty-four and left the Army Rangers in February. In less than two weeks of his departure, the Farmer-Veteran Coalition got him a well paying job working in a vineyard. He’s driving tractor, running irrigation systems, and learning grape production..

Again, thanks to the following for their support!

Iraq Afghanistan Impact Deployment Fund (IAIDF) of the California Community Foundation

And to our many individual donors: thanks!! Without you all, we would not be where we are today. Together, we can strengthen our country’s farms while positively impacting the lives of our transitioning young veterans.

Two million Americans will have returned from military service between 9/11/2001 and the end of this year. Many of these young men and women face difficult challenges transitioning from military service to the civilian workforce. A survey conducted by the Veterans Affairs Department in 2005, before the economic downturn, found that almost 25% of them were unemployed or underemployed. According to the same report, half of the young vets that were employed were making less than $25,000 a year.

Our industry needs these young men and women! They know hard work. They respect discipline. They’ve learned leadership. We can assist them in their transition into civilian life while assuring that we have a strong and talented group of individuals that will lead our farms and food businesses into the future.

To become one of our supporters, click on the donation link and select “Farmer Veteran Coalition” from the list of projects.

Matt grew up in the suburbs of Albuquerque, New Mexico, but he became a farmer in Iraq.

Matt, Lily and cornfield

“Rather than thinking of Iraq as the place where my heart was broken and my mind was controlled I prefer to think of Iraq as the place where I discovered the key to my freedom. I prefer to remember the trucks full of watermelons and pomegranates that would pass through our checkpoints. I felt strangely human as I waved cars by with pomegranate seeds stuck to my Kevlar vest.

“I first learned the value of sustainability and the resilience of agricultural communities while serving as an Infantryman in Iraq. In the middle of the chaos of a regime change and a damaged infrastructure the farmers kept growing and kept selling. Seeing this strength is what made me want to be a farmer.”

After Matt’s tour in Iraq, he attended the Center for Agro-ecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz, where he met Lily Schneider. When he finished his program in Santa Cruz, Matt volunteered for the Peace Corps and worked as an agricultural extension agent in Niger, West Africa. He then spent a year growing gourmet vegetables in Sebastopol.

Lily Schneider grew up in Berkeley, California with a garden in her backyard. She attended UC Santa Cruz and got her BA in Environmental Studies. In her last year, she spent a semester in Chile studying agronomy. Upon completion of her degree, she returned to California where she worked for several well known farms like Tierra Vegetables and The Apple Farm, learning more about sustainable agriculture along the way. Now she lives and farms in the Suisun Valley where there is good soil, clean water and a supportive community.

Together Matt and Lily are the owners and operators of Shooting Star CSA, a new eight-acre organic diversified vegetable farm. Working side-by-side, they grow over 35 different crops including strawberries, heirloom tomatoes, sweet peppers, potatoes, melons, basil, cucumbers and sugar snap peas.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. CSAs are partnerships between the local community and the farmer, with members purchasing shares in local farms, paying in advance and thus providing farms with a money up front and stable income. In return, members receive weekly boxes of their freshest, tastiest produce, delivered to their neighborhood. Boxes usually contain between six and nine different vegetables. The Shooting Star season runs for 25 weeks: June through November.

Finding the perfect combination of soil, water and climate was a long search, but McCue and Schneider are ecstatic to have settled into the stunningly beautiful Suisun Valley, just 40 minutes east of Berkeley. Matt and Lily recently employed another young veteran and have two active military people volunteering on their farm from the nearby air base.

by Sufyan Bunch, Veteran Outreach Coordinator

Sufyan with Congressman McNerney

Deputy Director Gail Wadsworth and I attended the East Bay Veterans Fair on July 13, 2009, in Concord. The fair focused on providing specialized assistance in three vital areas: Employment, Education, and Veterans Administration benefits. While at the event we met with veterans interested in farming and made valuable connections with other veteran advocacy groups.

To fulfill our mission of helping veterans, we need to stay abreast of current veteran issues. To this end, on July 18, 2009, I went to Congressman Jerry McNerney’s G.I. Bill Information Fair and Veterans Workshop event in Stockton, California. The Farmer Veteran Coalition was invited to attend with a number of other veteran outreach organizations. Groups that attended encompassed a wide array of veteran support services from housing to employment to education. I had the opportunity to meet with congressman McNerney, and tell the congressman about the project. The congressman was quite supportive of the project. Congressman McNerney is on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and created a Veterans Advisory Board for his district. He sponsored The Caring for Veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury Act of 2007 – H.R. 2201.

This coming Saturday, August 1, 2009, FVC Executive Director Michael O’Gorman and I will attend the second annual “Welcome Home Event” sponsored by the San Diego Veterans Administration. This will take place at the San Diego VA medical center. The event will offer information about VA health care and benefits, education and career opportunities, state and local services, as well as information on the post 9/11 GI Bill, and much more. Mark your calendar. It’s free for all veterans and their family members.

Adam and Michelle with new blueberry plants

Adam Burke was the first person in his family who didn’t go directly into farming. His life’s path took him away from the family farm that he grew up on in Sumter County, Florida and across the world to the battlefields of Iraq, then back home on a stretcher. Now, after several difficult years of hard work, tenacity and relearning how to walk and talk, Adam and his wife Michele are back on the farm.

Adam was injured twice in Iraq. After recovering from his first injury, he returned to combat. Then, three days before his fifteen-month tour was to end in 2004, he took a mortar hit while serving in Balad, in the middle of the Sunni triangle.

I still have shrapnel riddled throughout my head and body,” he says. “I have been undergoing treatment and therapy with the VA System and the progress is slow and tiresome.”

Adam suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and vertigo. He walks with a cane to catch his falls. He has a 100% disability rating. A lesser person might take his disability pay and give up, but Adam not only wants to farm, he wants to help other vets.

Adam and Michele are putting together a very unique blueberry farm. They are planting two-year-old high-bush varieties in thirty-gallon containers. “That way guys can pick in wheelchairs or if they have just one arm,” he says. Their five-acre blueberry farm will serve as a sanctuary for other vets, offering employment, healing and an endless supply of nature’s most delicious antioxidant.

Adam’s commitment to the Farmer Veteran Coalition goes beyond his own farm. While receiving treatment at the VA in California this spring, Adam called farmers in his Florida hometown to see who needed help. When he found farms looking for labor, Adam asked the Florida VA to send over some vets. Two of them got work washing and boiling green peanuts for Michele’s father’s roadside stand.

AdamBurkeStoryJuly21_2009 (pdf)