海角大神

From combat to cornfields: In farming, veterans find new purpose

Difference Maker

It鈥檚 12 degrees, the wind is biting, and Sara Creech heads out to feed her livestock. So much for the romance of farming. The wind gusts across frozen pastures, against the small metal barn where her chickens huddle, and through the open cab of her red Kubota four-wheeler, the back loaded with bales of hay.

She stops at a fence, and nine shaggy cattle lumber over. 鈥淐ome on, buddy!鈥� she calls out to the smallest, lagging behind. 鈥淲hy so slow?鈥� She tosses them clumps of hay, working with the quick efficiency of someone familiar with daily chores and undaunted by the cold.

鈥淲ith farming there are a lot of really tough times,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 cold or it鈥檚 hot. It鈥檚 hard to make money. There are so many things to go wrong.... But I totally feel more at peace in farming than in anything I鈥檝e done in my life. I feel I was made for farming.鈥�

Ms. Creech is a former Air Force nurse and part of a growing effort across the United States to help veterans become farmers. This effort began a decade ago when a California farm manager named Michael O鈥橤orman assembled a small group of vets and started the . Today the FVC has more than 16,000 members across the country and an increasing number of state chapters. Meanwhile, hundreds of other organizations have joined the effort, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state agricultural universities. 鈥淲e鈥檝e been able to wake up and mobilize an entire industry,鈥� Mr. O鈥橤orman says.

Ms. Creech has been both a beneficiary and a leader of this mobilization, a node in an expanding web of veteran farmers and would-be farmers. She has opened her small Indiana farm to them, hosting workshops, giving tours, and offering advice and encouragement. In 2017, she and two veterans at Purdue University started the Indiana chapter of the FVC. The chapter鈥檚 big project this year is setting up a small incubator farm where aspiring farmers can spend an extended period in residence.

鈥淛ust hearing her story is encouraging,鈥� says Michael Mosier, a Marine veteran in eastern Indiana who has attended workshops on Ms. Creech鈥檚 farm.听

Ms. Creech didn鈥檛 start out to be a farmer. She grew up on the outskirts of Kalamazoo, Michigan, within sight of cornfields, but that鈥檚 as close as she got to agriculture. She went to college, became a nurse, and joined the Air Force.听

She served two years, some of it in a forward surgical team based in Qatar. Deployed with combat units, the team worked to keep wounded soldiers alive until they could be evacuated. In 2006, she left the Air Force with post-traumatic stress disorder. Five years later her husband, Lt. Col. Charles Creech, a pilot, was diagnosed with colon cancer and died.听

Ms. Creech tried to return to nursing. 鈥淚 hated being in the hospital,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t brought back too many reminders, too much stress.鈥� At the end of 2011, she bought an old 43-acre dairy farm west of Indianapolis and withdrew to the countryside.

That first spring she planted 50 fruit trees and hundreds of raspberries. At the time she wasn鈥檛 thinking of a commercial operation. Like many veterans, she simply yearned for a healthier and more peaceful life. Then she attended a farming seminar with other veterans. 鈥淚 was really charged,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 thought, I鈥檓 going home and I鈥檓 going to start a farm.鈥�

Most Indiana farms grow two things: corn and soybeans. Blue Yonder Organic Farm grows many things. Ms. Creech keeps ducks, turkeys, cattle, sheep, and hundreds of laying hens. She grows many kinds of fruits and vegetables, including shiitake mushrooms. In late winter she makes maple syrup. Diversity is the key, she says. She sells most of what she produces at farmers markets and through community-supported agriculture programs. Farming, she says, has helped her 鈥渞econnect to the community.鈥�

Ms. Creech and others say veterans are well suited to farming. They say military service instills the discipline and work ethic a farmer needs. Many vets, too, are looking for the sense of purpose that they find in growing crops or tending livestock. Farming also eases their adjustment to civilian life. For some, it can help heal emotional and psychological wounds.

鈥淎 lot of it has to do with the fact that you鈥檙e taking something like a seed and planting it in the ground and providing care for it and nursing it,鈥� Ms. Creech says. 鈥淎nd something is being born out of that.鈥�

Even as she worked to establish her farm, Ms. Creech was reaching out to her community 鈥� to veterans like Caroline Phillips. Ms. Phillips spent seven months at the farm, learning the ropes. Back home from Army service in Iraq, she experienced anxiety and depression. She found it hard to drive or even leave her house. Farming began to change that. 鈥淚 knew I had plants and animals that relied on me to live,鈥� she says.

At Ms. Creech鈥檚 farm she helped build hoop houses and prepare vegetable beds. She planted, weeded, and harvested. She fenced in a small pasture and started her own herd of milk goats. There was always something more to do.

After leaving the farm, Ms. Phillips went to Rome to study food and agriculture. She fell in love, got married, and came into possession of a small olive grove in southern Italy. Today she sells artisanal oil on Amazon.听

鈥淢y time with Sara taught me patience and humbled me,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t gave me purpose, a new mission. It gave me my life back.鈥�

Some vets return home to established family operations, but most, like Ms. Creech, are starting from scratch.

Her days are long. On most nights, she鈥檚 on call for an insurance company, arranging medical care, and sometimes evacuations, for people abroad. 鈥淵ou get used to it,鈥� she says.听

Meanwhile, there is new life to tend. On the upper floor of her farmhouse, seedlings are sprouting in racks under fluorescent lights 鈥� slender shoots of tomato, lettuce, pepper, spinach, and beet. Fifty chicks are living in her bathtub, tumbling over each other and filling the air with their shrill peeping. The U.S. Postal Service delivered them a few days earlier, when it was too cold for them in the barn.

鈥淚n the military it鈥檚 all about the bigger mission, being part of something bigger,鈥� Ms. Creech says. 鈥淲hen you come out of the military, an office job just doesn鈥檛 have that higher purpose. Farming does.鈥�

Three groups with links to agriculture听

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鈥⑻�听aims to empower people as well as communities dealing with poverty, illiteracy, disease, or social injustice. Take action: for those who work with farmers to improve their harvests.

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