FVC’s Veterans Organic Farming Educational Retreat  took place Memorial Day weekend. Sixteen aspiring farmers with military service backgrounds attended and all day Saturday and Sunday they were informed by experts in organic farming, training and certification. FVC provided accommodations, food and transportation to the venues, all around Santa Cruz, CA. Here are most of the attendees and FVC staff, posing amidst the organic berry bushes of Swanton Berry Farm. Jim Cochran, the founder, is in the center rear:

Photo by Susanna Frohman.

This article, Veteran Soldiers Become Novice Farmers, will reach many thousands of readers who are loyal to the Rodale group, which has published OGM for over 50 years.

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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.

Vets visit an Ensenada, Mexico, tomato growhouse

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

In this talk from last April, presented in San Francisco as part of the Long Now Seminars speaker series, he presents the premise, as described on the Fora TV site, that “Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael Pollan’s talk promoted the premise — and hope — that farming can become an occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did. They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle.”

This is about making agriculture sustainable.

This video takes one hour and twenty-six minutes (1:26) to watch, but you can choose to watch only short segments, as provided if you click the Full Program link.

Here are some quotes from the story in the North County Times.

The recycling process Archipley uses to grow bio-hydroponic organic basil may be part of thefuture of farming, especially in Southern California, where water is in increasingly short supply.

But for the men working with Archipley last week, their future is much more personal. The workers are part of a unique program coordinated by the Department of Veterans Affairs t

o offer a second chance, as well as a peaceful environment, to vets.

* * * * *

Archipley, 28, said he never imagined his small farm could help fellow veterans when he started the project in 2006 after returning from three tours in Iraq. Then again, while growing up in Northern California, he never thought he would be farmer.

“I didn’t have any background,” he said about farming. “My wife had an itch to move to Italy a couple of years ago, and I didn’t want to move out of the United States. But a friend said if you like Italy, you should check this place out.”

The rolling, open hills surrounding his farm looked enough like Tuscany for the couple, and Archipley and his wife, Karen, moved onto the property and began selling their avocados and basil at local farmer’s markets.

* * * * *

Archipley said he would like to see the program duplicated around the world, and he sees it having great potential for veterans returning from urban wars.

“Take an Iraq vet or an Afghanistan vet, where every roof was a potential danger,” he said. “What do you do? Come back and work in an urban environment? You can’t just put them in Wal-Mart and expect them to greet customers.”

The first six veterans through the program have been older than the typical Afghanistan and Iraq vets, but the program already has its own success stories. One of the first two men in the program was a homeless Desert Storm veteran, who now is employed by Archipley and living in a mobile home on the farm.

…some as yet undefined portion of capital should be steered toward smaller, local farms and businesses that are friendly to the environment.

The story begins with a description of a young dairy farmer, Dante Hesse, who rents land and a barn outside of New York City and sells organic milk at $5 a quart in the city. He could sell much more if he could afford to build his own processing plant, but needs investors to grow his business.

“We feel pretty strongly at this point that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in helping, and the way the economy is now, one argument might be that it’s a bad time to be doing something like this,” Hesse says. “But I think the inverse is true, that it’s actually a good time because people are scared of the stock market, and they know that food is a vital part of survival. And local food is going to become very important in the very near future.”

Woody Tasch is the venture capitalist who founded Slow Money to find investors for such businesses.

Jason had loaded and launched fighter-bombers in the Persion Gulf during his 4-year stint in the service. He came home with post traumatic stress.

“The experience was hard to digest,” he said on Sunday afternoon at Star Route Farms in Bolinas. “There is a choking feeling that eventually catches up with you.”

The feeling caught up with him in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and after several years of trying to cope with disabling fear and anxiety, Yarbrough ended up at a homeless facility for veterans on Treasure Island.

That was where he connected with FVC, which led him to complete an internship at Crescent Moon Farms in Santa Rosa, California. As Warren Weber was quoted:

“Soldiers may be particularly suited to farming; the discipline they learn in the military may serve them well in farming.”