In the rolling green hills of Hendersonville, North Carolina, an organic farm has created a therapeutic refuge for veterans as mental health, addiction, and disability remain among the top challenges for American servicemembers.
Compounding this, last year, the Veterans Benefits Administration processed more than 1.9 million disability compensation and pension claims, a record for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
Military veterans are also in a high-risk category for developing addictions.
An analysis from Addiction Help states that 1.3 million veterans had a substance abuse disorder in 2019.
The VA reports that two out of every 10 veterans struggling with PTSD also have a substance abuse disorder.
Some analyses put that number higher.
Within that same group, only half of returning veterans receive any treatment.
Alan “Al” Yeck, director of Veterans Healing Farm, said the number of veterans lost to suicide is even higher.
“It’s more like 40 per day,” Yeck told The Epoch Times.
Started in 2013 by John and Nicole Mahshie, the farm has evolved over the past decade to include multiple programs designed to support and help veterans. These range from organic gardening to animal therapy and beekeeping.
Before becoming the farm’s director, Yeck arrived as a volunteer. He said he didn’t even know he needed help himself.
“My constant companion for the last 30 years has been PTSD,” he said.
Yeck is a retired U.S. Marine and comes from a generational military family. His father served in World War II and his brother fought in the Vietnam War.
When he was younger, he noticed how his father would get angry over small things, which he said were “disproportionate to whatever was going on.”
Yeck remembers multiple interactions with his father that involved “a lot of anger.”
However, it wasn’t until his older brother returned from Vietnam and had the same problem—sudden leaps to rage that didn’t match the circumstances—that Yeck realized both his brother and father were dealing with PTSD.
“Trauma is one of those things that can be passed from generation to generation until we understand what those demons are that make people do things,” he said.
People dealing with PTSD struggle with more than just depression. Heightened levels of anger play a key role.
The agency noted that people with PTSD can get stuck in survival mode responses and may respond to all types of stress this way.
It’s why Yeck is passionate about the work he and his team are doing.
Finding a Connection
At the farm, veterans are welcome to help plant and harvest organic produce, learn plant medicine, learn how to make preserves, and much more. But those who arrive aren’t required to work. They can relax and enjoy nature.Yeck said most of the arrivals are eager to participate in the farm’s programs, which have military-inspired names such as the “bee squad” and “tomato squad.”
The farm produce is free for veterans to take home. The rest is donated to community rescue missions and a local women’s shelter.
“It’s just another way veterans can serve their community,” Yeck said.
The sense of shared camaraderie, teamwork, and highly organized routines gives servicemembers a specific purpose. After returning home, that structure changes drastically according to some veterans.
“It’s different when you come home. Bullets aren’t flying, but there are different kinds of battles,” a retired U.S. Marine currently working for the VA, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times.
After serving a tour in Iraq in 2004, the Marine came home and, like many, felt at a loss for what to do next.
“I remember just standing in my kitchen one morning in a sort of numb trance and it hit me: I didn’t have a purpose,” he said. “I had a job, sure, but I didn’t have a real reason to get up in the morning.”
Like many, he struggled with the loss of community and structure that came from military service and admitted to emotionally “isolating” from his friends and family in depression for almost a year after returning home.
“It’s something people are talking more about now, but back then, you didn’t really have much support,” he said.
Yeck agrees with this sentiment. In his own experience, he has observed that even today, there’s a stigma attached to mental health issues in the U.S. military.
“If you’re on active duty and you reach out for help, I can’t tell you how that commanding officer will react,” he said.
This is where the Veterans Healing Farm steps up and offers that sense of community to veterans who feel adrift without a team.
The lifeline this creates can be critical, because having a sense of purpose is directly associated with positive mental health in different age groups.
The report noted that 58 percent of young adult respondents claimed to lack “meaning or purpose” in their lives.
Half of the test group said their mental health was negatively affected by not knowing what to do with their lives.
This is also the case as they age.
The highest rates of reported suicide during the observed study period were Veterans Health Administration patients diagnosed with substance abuse, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
The troubling data underscore Yeck’s mission.
He said: “A lot of them [veterans] will say ‘I’ve found my tribe’ when they come out here. The vision is an end to veteran suicide.”
Future Forward
Beyond daily activities such as gardening, the Veterans Healing Farm also hosts workshops, organized outings such as baseball games, and special events that bring in servicemembers and their families.This year, Yeck said the farm had more than 700 visitors come to their resource fair.
“We had 40 organizations that offered free services to veterans and their families. We had food trucks and a band. We just finished our third one,” he said.
But the piece de resistance was when the farm hosted the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall, which saw a turnout of nearly 4,000 people.
“You look at those 58,000 names and each one of them has a family. It creates a massive opportunity for healing for Vietnam veterans,” Yeck said.
The farm operates with just two full-time members and a handful of seasonal workers. All the programs are based on donations and grants.
“We’re able to offer all these therapy workshop classes,” Yeck said. “That’s what we raise the funds for. If we were trying to do all this ourselves, our budget would be into the millions.”
However, big changes are in the works for the farm this year.
The farm has seen 11 years of cultivating orchards and gardens with veterans from all walks of life, but its lease won’t be renewed in August.
Relocating the farm is tricky because it has a lot of special needs such as being outside a flood plain and nowhere near traditional agriculture since the pesticides could affect their bees and organic farming operations.
“We’ve looked at so much land in the past seven months,” Yeck said. “We thought we found one last week, but they got an all-cash offer.”
Plus there’s a developer boom happening in the area.
“Western North Carolina is going through a big thing with developers right now,” he said. “Where there’s land, developers are building. And what they’re building is $600,00 dollar homes. And what they’re building on used to be farmland.”
Yeck said it won’t be an easy feat to move the farm, and getting the funding is another challenge.
“I’ve approached major organizations, and they’re just not structured for rapid change,” he said, noting that a lot of the existing grant money the farm has is program-specific.
But he’s not discouraged. After connecting with thousands of fellow veterans over the years, Yeck and his team are staying focused on the future.
He said the farm is looking for about 10 acres of land with the ability to rebuild what they’re leaving behind at the Hendersonville location. This includes things such as fruit orchards and a greenhouse.
It’s an uphill battle, for the moment, but Yeck remains positive because he’s seen how the farm has touched so many veteran’s lives.
“We have to have that compassion and want to help each other,” he said.
