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.

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

Michael O'Gorman, Project Director of FVC, 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 appreciation of 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.

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.

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)

The Iraq Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund (IADIF) was created in 2006 to address the unmet needs of men, women and families affected by deployment to Iraq, Afghanistan and the surrounding areas. It is a special initiative of the California Community Foundation, which was founded in 1915. The California Community Foundation is one of the largest philanthropic organizations in Los Angeles County, managing more than $1 billion in assets.

One of the benefits of receiving this grant from IADIF is membership in the Coalition of Iraq + Afghanistan Veterans (CIAV). This coalition was founded in 2008 with support from IADIF and consists of fifty other major veteran support groups from across the country. FVC became a member of the CIAV prior to the second annual national conference held in May 2009 in Washington, DC. As a result, Executive Director Michael O’Gorman and Board of Advisors Chair David Visher were invited to attend the conference.

Some of the other members in the CIAV are well-known veterans support organizations such as Iraq and Afghan Veterans of America (IAVA) and Disabled American Veterans (DAV) as well as the RAND Corporation and the Sesame Workshop, which entertains the children of deployed parents. The Coalition works as a unit, passing word amongst the groups electronically about veterans or their families that are in need. The national conference included numerous veterans speaking about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), two of the signature wounds of modern warfare.

FVC was welcomed into the coalition and found overwhelming support for our project, in large part because of the high level of unemployment and the general lack of services available to veterans from rural areas of the country. FVC is aware of studies showing disproportionate numbers of young men and women enlisting in the military from small towns across the country.

The Farmer-Veteran Coalition is grateful to the Iraq and Afghan Deployment Impact Fund and the California Community Foundation for giving our young project a chance to expand our reach among returning veterans and to tell them about the unique opportunities that now exist for beginning farmers. Each year CCF grants over $100 million as investments in the future of communities in and around Los Angeles. The foundation partners with individual donors and actively supports non-profit organizations to address the diverse and dynamic needs of the community. CCF makes grants in the area of health, education, affordable housing, the arts and human development.