FARM stress is a buzzword, and lived experience, in our rural communities. Who could imagine that farming might relieve stress? Peter Brown can.
For years he was a frightened boy, living with autism in a scary, incomprehensible world. His school couldn’t help.
Frustrated and angry, he was constantly throwing things. But Peter has spent the last few years working on the Pennyhooks organic cattle farm in Wiltshire, England. Working beside farmer Lydia Otter, he has become a calmer, more confident teen. He’s still autistic but able to cope with the world.
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Peter is one of many who have found a new lease on life through farm work. A movement that began in Holland is spreading around the world. It goes by several names: Care Farming; Green Care; Farming for Health.
Basically farms partner with health-care agencies to provide recreational and work-related activities for people with disabilities, psychiatric patients, drug addicts, disaffected youth and elderly people.
Farmers are paid for taking patients. They receive free labour and can sell the food they produce. More than 1,000 such farms are operating in Norway and the Netherlands and thousands more in Europe, the U.S. and other countries. Studies of their effectiveness have been almost uniformly positive.
Care farms seem to work for several reasons. For drug addicts and young people with behaviour problems, the work provides structured time, lots of exercise and few temptations. Whatever the disability, farmers give clients work that they can do, so it builds self-esteem and confidence.
Clients learn responsibility as they care for animals and crops. The protected space, the quiet, and natural beauty help to calm afflicted minds. And of course many farmers are natural caregivers. They have multiple nurturing skills from their work with plants and animals to their off-farm work in schools and hospitals. Of course, care farming is not without risks and safety issues, but the care farms have met those challenges.
From the producer side, care farming offers interesting possibilities. Roger and Beryl Hosking of Highfield’s Happy Hens in Derbyshire, England, talk about the satisfaction of seeing young people deeply changed. At a time when our youth are leaving the farm in record numbers, when too many of those remaining struggle with addiction and depression, it is wonderful to see them returning to farms for healing and renewal.
If properly organized, there can be an economic upside as well. Care farms draw on funding from government health regions, charitable foundations, even churches. If extra staff are needed to accompany the clients, these are often supplied by partner agencies. And of course, there can be significant financial benefit on farms that use more human labour than expensive machinery.
As the Hoskings put it, “Highfields is like a chain reaction. We have thousands of chickens producing thousands of eggs every day. Those eggs need to be collected, counted, packed and delivered. Even the most damaged young person can find a place where they can fit in and feel useful.”
Maybe growing people could relieve a bit of stress for farmers too.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon.
