In fact, 136 registered in advance or at the door to seek new jobs or career direction. They represented military generations going back to WWII, with many Viet Nam veterans as well as younger vets with service in the past decade.

We introduced this video at the career fair.

Photo courtesy of Coalition for Iraq + Afghanistan Veterans

The Coming Home Project, based in San Francisco, California, is holding a retreat for OIF & OEF family members with deployed loved ones to gather, relax and restore July 25-28, 2009. The retreat will be held at the Angela Center in Santa Rosa, California.

The challenges family members face during their loved one’s deployment are unique and acute: managing separation, communication, parenting, employment, marital concerns, and financial issues are just some of the challenges. Children and teenagers also can find this period extremely stressful.

• Renew mind, body, spirit, and relationships in a beautiful, tranquil setting in Santa Rosa, California.
• Learn relaxation, breathing, movement and other techniques for managing strong feelings, reducing stress and enhancing well-being.
• Improve communication and relationships. Enjoy tennis, volleyball, basketball, swimming, leisurely walks and delicious food.
• Find comfort and strength, safety and trust in the presence of others who know the impacts of serving.
• Share stories and experiences, use writing and drawing to express what is sometimes hard to say, and support and learn from one another. Everything is confidential.

This article published in Rural Health Advocate presents the need for rural health care workers to learn how to treat these afflictions.

What should happen?  Rural providers must acquaint themselves with the symptom complexes of PTSD and TBI.  Clinics, hospitals, and private practice providers should investigate TriCare, the insurance provided to National Guard members.  Open lines of communication to VA facilities are a must.  Finally, and most importantly, health care providers should take each patient’s military service history in order to identify at risk men and women and help the returnee back into the rural community with appropriate care.

Date: April 16, 2009 Time: 8am-4pm

The summit is a unique opportunity for California veterans, their families and care providers to critically examine existing networks of care for veterans. At the summit, training will be offered on Post Traumatic Stress, transition for combat to community, housing, employment issues and resources for newly separated veterans. The conference will examine mental health issues and their profound impacts on housing, employment, economic stability and social welfare of our state’s military personnel and veterans.

Agenda

Please click the following links for registration:

Attendee Registration Exhibitor Registration

Sponsor Registration

Agrotherapy: Farms Can Heal

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 2:37 PM PST

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” my Uncle Dale used to say when I worked on his Iowa farm as a child. In recent years I have tried to eat something each day that I have grown, or something that a neighbor or someone local has grown.

Such seasonal eating — which we can fortunately do here in West County — can be physically and mentally nourishing. For example, around here from December through February wild miner’s lettuce is abundant, March through November chickens lay eggs. June to August is berry season, and September to November apples abound.

While farming since the early 1990s South of Sebastopol (which some refer to affectionately as Sebysouth  or Sebtati) and sometimes teaching psychology at Sonoma State University and elsewhere, I have come to see that the healing powers of apples, chickens, berries, wildcrafting, and farming itself can be mental, as well as physical. So I have started thinking and writing about what might be called agropsychology and agrotherapy. Farms can heal body, mind, and soul.

Animals, plants, and the elements can be therapists that engage in many healing functions. They can be connective and help break isolation. Pets and farm animals can be funny and help draw someone out of depression. Pruning can rid one of more than unwanted branches, as one’s “stuff” can also be cut. A bright sun can lift one’s spirit and a gentle stream can soothe the soul. Nature heals naturally.

Pet therapy and horticulture therapy are becoming increasingly popular in hospitals, recovery centers, and in work with military veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress, the disabled, and those with Alzheimer’s Disease. Europe even has many agricultural operations they call agrotherapy farms.

As I’ve begun to write and talk about agrotherapy people have described their personal healing processes and how gardening and farming help them. “I farm because it is my work, play, church, school, gym, and therapy,” my agrarian Sebysouth neighbor Jeff Snook recently said as we exchanged food and plants. Farms tend to create relationships — with plants, animals, the elements, and humans — which can promote physical and mental well-being.

Such neighborly relationships will be especially important, even for survival, as we head into an economically uncertain future. Supermarket shelves are not likely to be as full in the future as they currently are, nor will gas stations have as much available cheap fuel. Growing at least part of one’s own food can reduce the stress of worrying about where future meals are going to come from.

“I can vouch for what you call ‘agropsychology.’ It saved me in my recovery from a traumatic childhood and now in middle age. I am once again finding great healing, joy, and contentment in growing my own garden and raising my own farm animals for food, fun and deep connection with the cycles of life and death. It is a spiritual, as well as a practical avocation. My husband says he can tell how happy I am by how much dirt is under my fingernails,” wrote Jennifer York, owner of the Bamboo Sorcery:

“The micro-elements of soil are positively impactful in managing depression. I don’t think we can say the same thing for ‘sterilized’ soil,”writes clinical psychologist Dr. Mary McMahon from Massachusetts.

So if something ails you, paying a  professional therapist can be helpful. And you can turn to nature, get down on all fours, get your hands dirty, plant something and then eat it. Farm animals and pets can delight with their beauty and goofiness. When the wind takes a redwood for a spin on the dance floor, it can be a marvelous, uplifting sight.

Shepherd Bliss farms in Sebastopol, teaches psychology part-time at SSU, and has essays on agrotherapy in the book “Enduring War” and the pending “Ecotherapy,” scheduled for publication in May. He can be reached at sb3@pon.net

As described in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle,

“We’re finding that larger numbers of these vets are coming back not so much to San Francisco proper,” said Dave Lopez, director of the organization’s jobs program. “I would say the majority are coming back to the East Bay, at least the ones we’re seeing in the employment and training unit.”

The year ending last September saw an average of 23 vets a month seeking job help from the group, up from nine vets a month before that. In the last month, there were 39, Lopez said.

“Most of the ones we’re seeing are also younger aged,” Lopez said. The bulk of them are between 21 and 26, he said, and have limited job skills because they enlisted soon after leaving school.

The new Swords to Plowshares center opened earlier this month at 1433 Webster St. in downtown Oakland. The two staffers, Gulf War vet Ken Crawford and Vietnam War vet Eric Nichols, occupy a space amid a suite of offices housing other nonprofit organizations that can be partners, Lopez said.

Swords to Plowshares gets money from federal and state grants, as well as from private foundations, to pay for training. It also helps arrange for temporary housing and part time employment while the veterans are attending training courses, and helps with resumes and transportation to interviews.

The new Swords to Plowshares employment and training office can be reached at (510) 891-8773. The organization’s main office in San Francisco can be reached at (415) 252-4788.

For more info: swords-to-plowshares.org

Matt Mccue, who has been one of FVAs best examples and most eloquent spokespersons, has started a new CSA (Community-supported Agriculture) business in Suisun Valley, California. According to their new blog, Shooting Star CSA (Matt and his partner Lilly Schneider) “will be growing a diversified mix of over 35 different vegetable crops, everything from radishes to peppers.”

Congratulations Matt and Lilly!

According to Michael O’Gorman, FVC CEO, “The Farmer-Veteran Coalition is a young and unique alliance between leaders in California’s sustainable agriculture and a growing number of men and women returning from the battlefronts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our mission is to find jobs in agriculture for returning war veterans and this event is about sharing real-life experiences of veterans who are benefiting from training in sustainable agriculture.” O’Gorman, who has farmed vegetables for nearly 40 years, added that, “Six months ago we were working with six veterans; now we are working with twenty, and another thirty have expressed interest in agriculture as a career once they leave active duty.”
Guests of Honor at the event are Gold Star Mothers Mary Tillman, whose son Pat Tillman, a star professional football player, died in Afghanistan, and Nadia McCaffrey, founder of the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation/ The Veterans Village, named after her son who died in Iraq. Other veterans assisted by FVC who will be at the event include:

• Marine Sergeant Colin Archipley served three tours in Iraq. He and his wife Karen used their own funds to start Archi’s Acres Veteering initiative, coordinated with San Diego’s VA Health Care’s CWT/ VI clinic, serves as a working busineserans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) program http://archisacres.com/veterans.html. This pions model for similar projects where trainees work side-by-side with fellow veterans returning to the workforce. Coursework includes hydroponics and organic farming techniques to produce crops such as avocados and basil.
• Matt McCue, an Army combat vet in Iraq who spent last season farming with well-known gardener and restaurateur Dan Smith from the French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol.  This year he is a starting a CSA of his own with his girl friend and fellow farmer Lily Schneider.
• Josh Anderson grew up farming in the Mid-West before entering the ?Army and then the Peace Corps.  With the help of the FVC he will be entering the prestigious Agro-Ecology program at the University of California Santa Cruz this summer, receiving full financial aid from San Francisco’s Swords to Plowshares veteran assistance programs.
• Jenn Fusaro is a young female Navy vet who wants to farm when she finishes her Master’s thesis at Humboldt State’s Community and Environmental Studies program. She is researching how the post 9-11 veterans can help solve America’s critical need for young farmers.
• Army vet Chris Whitaker, back from two tours in Iraq, runs Fresh Edibles CSA in Stockton, California with his father Bob. Chris is also attending college with the goal to become a doctor while still continuing to farm.

Other young participants in the program unable to attend the dinner include Purple Heart recipient Adam Burke from a small town near Sarasota Florida.  Adam, who was injured by a mortar attack in the Sunni Triangle, was the first member of his family to not go directly into farming.  “I was tired of picking vegetables my whole childhood,” he told us.  “Now I’d give anything to still be able to bend over like that.”  Adam wants to start a blueberry farm with high bush varieties planted in thirty-gallon containers.  “I want a farm where other vets can come and work,” he says.  “That way they can pick even if they lost their legs or have just one arm.”
Event Details
The critically-acclaimed Foreign Cinema Restaurant (see www.foreigncinema.com) is located at 2534 Mission Street, San Francisco and the event starts at 7 p.m. Wednesday, January 28. Tickets are $100.00 each available from Linda Speel at 707-981-8010.
About The Farmer-Veteran Coalition
The mission of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition is to mobilize our food and farming community to create healthy and viable futures for America’s veterans by enlisting their help in building our green economy, rebuilding our rural communities, and securing a safe and healthy food supply for all. For more information visit www.farmvetco.org  or e-mail   info at (@) farmvetco.org or phone (707) 981-8010.
About Archi’s Acres Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) Program
Archi’s Acres Veterans Sustainable Agriculture Training (VSAT) is a nonprofit program in San Diego, California that helps veterans returning from combat make a fresh start. This cooperative effort of Archi’s Acres organic farm and the San Diego Veterans Affairs Compensated Work Therapy/Veterans Industries (VA CWT/ VI) program is s targeted to veterans who may be interested in returning to the work force in the agricultural industry. VSAT’s Bio-Organic Growing course offers trainees a full range of learning experiences that include hands on training and text book learning. Course work includes produce production, from seeds to the end user, and sales channels from wholesalers and retailers to the farmer’s market. For more information visit http://archisacres.com/veterans.html email Linda Poniktera at ?linda@archisacres.com or call (760) 670-5489.

Finding the Path of the Warrior on the Journey Home:

A Retreat and Support Community for Returning Veterans

Sunday, March 1 – at Green Gulch
Sunday, April 5 – at City Center
Saturday, May 9 – at City Center
Sunday, June 14 – at Green Gulch

10 am – 5 pm
with Chris Fortin and Lee Klinger Lesser

This four-month group is designed to build a safe and welcoming community for returning veterans. It consists of four monthly one-day retreats, two at Green Gulch Farm (March 1 and June 14), and two at the City Center (April 5 and May 9). Activities will include: meditation and mindfulness practices to cultivate awareness and healing; writing as a practice to develop self-awareness and expression; gardening and farming to engage with the natural vitality of working with the land; weekly mindfulness and stress management practices to integrate skills being learned in the retreats; and weekly phone or e-mail contact with the leaders and other participants. The retreat is non-denominational and open to all veterans.

“In the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone.”—Rachel Naomi Remen

Fee: $10 per day, and the opportunity to offer a teaching donation if desired.
To register, contact Lee Klinger Lesser at leelesser@gmail.com or 415-307-6043.