{"id":33684,"date":"2019-11-11T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=33684"},"modified":"2019-11-18T08:38:04","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T13:38:04","slug":"veterans-find-purpose-and-healing-at-comfort-farms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2019\/11\/11\/veterans-find-purpose-and-healing-at-comfort-farms\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans Find Purpose and Healing at Comfort Farms"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Iraqi deserts and villages outside Baghdad, Troy Bowyer repaired tanks and other vehicles in two back-to-back tours as an Army mechanic. Six years ago, however, he was medically retired from the Army with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with major depression and anxiety; he also suffered painful nerve damage in his back, legs, and arms. Bowyer was only 27 at the time, and it had been two years since he\u2019d finished his second deployment\u2014and about a year and a half since he had tried to end his own life.<\/p>\n

Now living in Lizella, Georgia, Bowyer is working at an all-volunteer biodynamic farm in nearby Milledgeville. Today, he\u2019s designing a watering system for the farm\u2019s vegetables, poultry, and hogs that will automate a task now taking a couple of hours a day.<\/p>\n

While his physical and psychological struggles continue, the farm gives him a purpose and a community, he says. \u201cGetting out there is good, doing some hard work, whatever you may be able to handle,\u201d he says. \u201cFocusing on a small task kind of diverts your mind from all that pain\u2026 It gives you a small purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded by Army veteran Jon Jackson in 2014 as the first project of his nonprofit Stag Vets. Inc.<\/a>, Comfort Farms grows heirloom vegetables and raises heritage turkeys, hogs, hens, rabbits, and fish with the goal of helping veterans heal after their service. Veterans in immediate crisis\u201480 to 100 so far\u2014work for days or weeks at the 20-acre operation while they wait for treatment with the Veterans Administration (VA)\u2014and, if they\u2019re interested, they can stay for longer.<\/p>\n

\"Jon

Most volunteer by the day, driving in from out of town or staying at local motels, but some live for about a week in the farm\u2019s small cottage, which can house up to two veterans at a time, or in RVs parked on the farm. They find Comfort Farms largely through word of mouth from family, friends, or health care providers. Some, like Bowyer, have found it on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A volunteer therapist screens newcomers and refers those with active addictions to rehabilitation centers so they can address their substance abuse before beginning work. While the farm does not provide formal clinical treatment, it does serve as a bridge to care, connecting veterans with a wide and supportive network of private therapists, people affiliated with the VA, and peer support. It also provides them physical activity, nutritious food, a structured schedule, and a sense of identity and purpose\u2014all of which helps lay the foundation for healing. As the veterans connect with the land and animals through their work, they also begin to develop a sense of belonging among other vets, who innately understand what they\u2019ve been through.<\/p>\n

Jackson was inspired to start Comfort Farms in 2014 as he was leaving the military amidst the darkness of depression. \u201cBecause it didn\u2019t exist, a place like this, I just decided, ‘You know what? I\u2019m going to do it, I am going to follow my heart on this.’\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t want any of my brothers and sisters to go through the same kind of thing [I was].\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trauma of War<\/h4>\n

Before founding Comfort Farms, Jackson served his six combat deployments as an Army Ranger, which the U.S. Army describes it’s \u201cpremier direct-action raid force.\u201d Rangers, it goes on to say, are always \u201ccombat ready, mentally and physically tough, and prepared to fight our country\u2019s adversaries.\u201d With this role behind him, Jackson is well aware of the difficulty soldiers face coping with the transition from war zones to civilian life.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most discussed response to military combat is PTSD. But veterans can also grapple with depression and anxiety\u2014thanks to their time in the field, but also thanks the pain of being separated from their families.<\/p>\n[newsmatch_box]\n

Many veterans also lose their peers, and that numbs them, Jackson says. \u201cI go out to battle, I lose my friend,\u201d he says. \u201cOne day I am picking up his body parts, putting them in a bag, sending them home. I go out the next day, and the same thing happens. You lose a sense of yourself because you have to survive in that environment. So when vets come home, the thing they deal with the most is detachment and dissociation from family, intimacy, and touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, leaving military life, with its camaraderie and clear sense of mission, can be rough. Soldiers move from an adrenaline-pumping world wherein they have a core group of buddies to an unanchored life back in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a loneliness and social alienation that happens for people making a transition back to the civilian world,\u201d says C Sabathne, 39, a licensed family and marriage counselor who has volunteered with Comfort Farms since its early days and helps assess the veterans who work at Comfort Farms. Sabathne served as an infantry machine gunner and rifle team leader in the Army\u2019s 82nd Airborne Division from 2000 to 2003 and during the invasion of Iraq and then spent eight years\u2014including deployments\u2014with the Army Reserve. \u201cPeople going from, say, commanding a squad of nine people [to] suddenly working point-of-sale at a retail store answering to a 24-year-old hipster can feel a loss of purpose and identity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Sabathne says, \u201cRecently separated service members often\u2014mistakenly\u2014think of the title of \u2018Veteran\u2019 as being about something they did in the past, sort of a \u2018has-been.\u2019 In fact, being a veteran isn\u2019t about what we did once when we were young. It\u2019s about who we are right now because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n[pico_box]\n

A task as basic as working with sows and their piglets can help veterans reconnect with their feelings, Jackson says. Later, that connectivity can transfer to veterans\u2019 personal lives. Jackson has dubbed his approach of healing through farming \u201cAgro-Cognitive Behavior Therapy,\u201d and he\u2019s collaborating with mental health professionals to codify what goes on at Comfort Farms.<\/p>\n

From Army Ranger to Georgia Farmer<\/h4>\n

Jackson spent his early childhood in Jersey City, New Jersey, with the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline as the backdrop. As a young adult, he worked for six years in research labs for major pharmaceutical companies.<\/p>\n

After September 11, Jackson, already facing a failed marriage, decided to enlist. He says the thought that occurred to him was, \u201cOur country got attacked. There\u2019s no time like the present\u2014right now\u2014to do something about it and be a part of the change.\u201d His service ran from 2003 to 2015 and involved direct raids as a gunner on a Humvee with a .50-caliber machine gun, overseeing the movement of valuable equipment and personnel, and numerous classified missions.<\/p>\n

\"Jon

In 2013, however, the Army told Jackson he was not fit to deploy due to injuries sustained during battle, including traumatic brain injury. It was the same year he contemplated suicide.<\/p>\n

Jackson describes himself as \u201c100 percent disabled\u201d by the combat tours; he was nearly killed 20 times by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), he says. The trauma of those deployments is still embedded in his body.<\/p>\n

Four years ago, his wife took a picture of him with a flash camera, and that simple gesture\u00a0 reminded him of the experience of being in the blast radius of an IED. \u201cYou see the flash before you hear the bang. My body\u2019s response to the flash is\u2014I\u2019m ready. That [response] is primitive and primal way more than I can rationalize.\u201d He ended up in the shower, fully clothed and sobbing, for an hour.<\/p>\n

Jackson had been gardening a patch of his backyard in Columbus, Georgia, between deployments. In 2014, he created the nonprofit, with Comfort Farms as its first venture, and used a bank loan to buy 20 acres.<\/p>\n

Jackson named the farm after a buddy from his unit, Capt. Kyle A. Comfort, 27, who died in\u00a0 Afghanistan, from wounds he sustained when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.<\/p>\n

Carlisle Kellam, a filmmaker producing a documentary<\/a> about the farm, says its name works on multiple levels. \u201cThis isn\u2019t just about comfort,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is about getting out of your comfort zone and recognizing the fact that change has to be, or things are sacrificed for our well-being, whether it be people, animals, or other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s work on the farm over the last five years has helped him heal. \u201cThe farming practices that I use here have really helped me build back my skills for learning and recalling,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel sharp again. I feel as good as I was when I was an Army Ranger. I have a sense of accomplishment, a sense of giving back, a sense of service. For me, that\u2019s just the most important thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interconnected Practices<\/h4>\n

Comfort Farms relies on private donations as well as sales from its bimonthly farmers\u2019 market and weekly deliveries of produce and meats to restaurants in Atlanta. Jackson describes the operation as biodynamic, and each part of the farm is integrated and interdependent, reflecting the kind of connected life that veterans volunteering there need.<\/p>\n

\"Jon

Jackson and his crew grow heirloom vegetables, including North Georgia candy roaster squash, Creole Georgia collards, and Sea Island white flint corn, in raised beds. He loves heirlooms because \u201cthe artistry is within the seed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overarching philosophy is that\u2026 we need to listen to our land; we need to listen to our plants. As seed growers and seed savers… we have to produce food in a way where we can carry on the traditions and preserve things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The farm employs the no-till H\u00fcgelkultur technique<\/a>, which relies on decaying wood and other compostable biomass for soil fertility, water retention, and soil warming. It does not use herbicides of any kind. \u201cWe don\u2019t even use organic-approved pesticides for our farm,\u201d Jackson says. \u201cWe go above that, and we will identify where bugs are and if they\u2019re eating a certain crop, we will go ahead and let them have that crop and almost kind of sacrifice that crop so that way we can grow other crops.\u201d Additionally, they rely on \u201cgood old-fashioned going out there and squishing bugs with our fingers,\u201d Jackson says.<\/p>\n

The farm\u2019s rabbits produce the manure that fertilizes the vegetables. From late spring into early fall, black soldier flies lay their eggs in the rabbit manure, and the high-protein larvae serve as feed for the farm\u2019s animals and fish.<\/p>\n

Among the animals who live on the farm are about 50 Bourbon Red turkeys<\/a>, 70 American Mulefoot hogs<\/a>, 40 hens, and 150 rabbits. Jackson is drawn to heritage breeds because he loves their history and wants to model for other would-be farmers how to maximize profits. \u201cI can\u2019t get $20 for a chicken, but I can get $20 for a duck, and a duck grows faster than a chicken, so why would I grow a chicken?\u201d<\/p>\n

The animals live in large pens where they can roam, and they eat a selection of things that grow on the farm, as well as a silage<\/a> mix that has been fermented with molasses from corn grown on nearby dairy farms and contains sunflower seeds. They also eat the black soldier flies. Their seasonal diets give the hogs a unique flavor profile for diners in Atlanta restaurants. Spring hogs, for example, have been fed all through fall and winter, and eat a lot of pumpkins and sweet potatoes. Winter hogs have eaten summer foods: squash, melons, tomatoes, and cucumbers.<\/p>\n

\"Turkeys

The rhythm of work on the farm varies with the season. Right now, veterans are planting onions, garlic, cabbage, and beans, along with 10 varieties of carrots. They are also feeding and watering the animals, breeding rabbits, moving animals from pen to pen, and preparing rabbits and turkeys for slaughter. In these cooler months, they also work on the farm\u2019s infrastructure, including building raised beds.<\/p>\n

Having an Impact<\/h4>\n

Michael O\u2019Gorman founded the Farmer Veteran Coalition<\/a> in 2007 to help returning soldiers, a disproportionate number of whom are from rural areas, connect to farming. Americans who volunteered for military service after the September 11 attacks, including his own son, \u201cwent in with an enormous sense of purpose,\u201d O\u2019Gorman says. When they emerge, \u201cfarming can become their new mission,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s heroic. \u2018We needed you to defend our country, and now we need you to feed it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When O\u2019Gorman founded his nonprofit 12 years ago, none of the 40,0000 groups helping veterans in the United States were focused on farming. Now 250 of them are. Jackson\u2019s farm was one of the first, and he considers Jackson, who he views as charismatic and \u201clarger than life,\u201d as \u201ca star among them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time Michael Wall, director of farm services for Georgia Organics<\/a>, saw Jackson speak about healing through farming, he was deeply affected. \u201cHis story is very powerful,\u201d Wall says. He believes Jackson has earned national recognition through speaking engagements and media coverage because he’s \u201ca success story,\u201d who is “also damn good at what he does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jon

While Comfort Farms is not certified organic, it relies on many organic practices, and Jackson is a frequent keynote speaker at Georgia Organic\u2019s conferences. \u201cIt\u2019s very important to put up a successful model of a veteran and a Black farmer in Georgia, because both [groups] have been tremendously othered and disenfranchised by the agricultural industry for hundreds of years, and it hasn\u2019t stopped,\u201d Wall says.<\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s range of vision is wide. For example, right now, the musty Quonset hut<\/a> near the farm\u2019s entrance stores farm equipment. Jackson would like to raise private funds to transform it into what he calls an \u201cagro-culinary academy\u201d to provide critical job training to veterans who have struggled with addiction, mental illnesses, and homelessness.<\/p>\n

And that drive to help others can be contagious. Troy Bowyer says volunteering at Comfort Farms has given him a sense of purpose. \u201cWhat Jon has built up is amazing,\u201d he says, \u201cand the more effective we can get it going, the more veterans we\u2019re going to be able to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Iraqi deserts and villages outside Baghdad, Troy Bowyer repaired tanks and other vehicles in two back-to-back tours as an Army mechanic. Six years ago, however, he was medically retired from the Army with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with major depression and anxiety; he also suffered painful nerve damage in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1047,"featured_media":33698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4632,4479,4480],"tags":[],"coauthors":[12531],"class_list":["post-33684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farmer-profiles","category-farming","category-health"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVeterans Find Purpose and Healing at Comfort Farms | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The 20-acre central Georgia farm, founded by former U.S. Army Ranger Jon Jackson, helps struggling veterans find connection and belonging as they care for the land and animals.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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