Jacob Sullivan (Student - Rhodes College) interviewing Chris Peterson (Farm Manager -Alpha Omega Veteran Farm) and Becca Hart (Community Garden Organizer - Alpha Omega Veteran Farm)
Transcript
This podcast is part of the Rhodes College Just Food Series, which addresses food inequality through discussion of production, access, distribution and consumption in Memphis and beyond. In this semester long project, students and community members have come together to promote empowerment through awareness and equity.
My name is Jacob Sullivan and I’ll be hosting this episode “Veterans and Vegetables: Exploring the Urban Farm scape at Alpha Omega Veteran Services”. Before I get started it is important to understand my background, and previous interactions with the food justice world. I am a Philosophy and Anthropology Sociology double major at Rhodes college. I’ve always been interested in issues of inequality in the United States. My interest in the food justice dimension of inequality came about through my previous volunteer work in my hometown working in a food distribution warehouse. I found that the organization I was working with was doing very good work, but I worried that the food warehouse was only providing a temporary solution for food issues and not addressing the broader systemic issues that create food inequality. The inequalities present in the food system are multifaceted. Dimensions of race, gender, sexuality, class, age, addiction, and ability all play a role in constructing the unjust food scape in the United States. Since all of these various systems of oppression manifest themselves in similar ways, it is paramount that organizations looking to tackle food inequalities approach food justice in an inclusive way. In Memphis there is an organization that has been working to tackle food insecurity issues for homeless veterans for the last thirty years.
I had the pleasure of Interviewing three of the employees at Alpha Omega Veteran Services or AOVS for short. Chris the farm manager at the onsite farm, Becca, who manages programing, outreach, and the therapeutic programs, and lastly Ed, who is a residential employee on the farm. AOVS is a very unique organization that provides housing to previously homeless disabled veterans. The homeless are a population of people who experience food inequalities in a dramatic way, as often times their experiences intersect with many of the social determinants of the unjust food system in the US. I grew up near Fort Campbell and as a result, I have seen the struggles that homeless veterans often face. Disabled Veterans are often faced with economic and social hardships when they return home from the military. As a result, many disabled veterans end up homeless. Veterans make up approximately 9 percent of all homeless adults. These previous experiences I had working with disabled veterans near Fort Campbell drew me to AOVS because I found that they were finding creative solutions to tackle the issues that many homeless veterans are struggling with. The perspectives I gleaned from these three people helped me understand the importance of the food justice work they are doing here in Memphis.
Description of Organization
Becca gave a brief description of the operations here at AOVS.
Yes. So among the alpha omega veteran services has been around for 30 plus years and it serves previously homeless veterans by providing housing and rehabilitation programing to help those veterans transition and in civilian life and to transition back into stable housing.
Chris went into more detail with his description of the operations that take place on the farm
So one of the things that we do on the farm kind of first and foremost is to provide vegetables for the resident clients of Alpha Omega Veteran Services. So we provide free CSA to clients that live at the ball road and court street facilities.
And then the other three facilities that are under Alpha Megan's jurisdiction provide some sort of bulk item. So, you're kind of enhancing the nutrition folks live here access, access to produce. We also hire from within the resident population. So, we create jobs for residents that are interested in working on the farm. And they might also use the farm as a therapeutic.
In a therapeutic and educational resource, so I work with two colleagues that offer classes and culinary education, gardening, education, as well as in horticultural therapy, and we do use the farm for sort of educational therapeutic projects as well as working on some ways to connect residents with different other things in the food systems are training, engaging with the teachers as a whole. Lots of studies out there that we feel that we kind of base what we do on the therapeutic benefits of gardening from mental health benefits, which I can attest personally is one of the things that I'm interested in it. The physical benefits, you know, increasing dexterity, exercise, those sorts of things. And so we rely on those sorts of evidence-based practices that people have done in designing our programs. We also have kind of the added benefit of beautifying the spaces both you have in the farm here, but also through things like cut flowers and that kind of stuff. But yeah, the real focus is on working for therapy, education, culinary education.
The therapeutic side of AOVS is particularly interesting as it is incorporated into nearly every aspect of the organization. Becca utilizes techniques of horticultural therapy to help make the farm and living area at AOVS a place of healing. I asked Becca what is horticultural therapy, as I was unaware of the term before visiting AOVS.
So horticultural therapy is the notion that working in in a in a nutshell, it's the notion that working outside in nature with with plants and flowers and living things. How therapeutic it can be to nurture those those things and to be involved in kind of the life cycle that's shown through that system, as well as it's referring to the scientific benefits of participating nature both passively and actively and the ways in which that stimulates the brain and kind of facilitates that healing process.”
These healing process’ are particularly important to the residents at AOVS. Most of the residents are elderly and suffer from some kind of disability. Working in a space such as this with disabled veterans presents a lot of challenges. As a result, I asked Chris to explain the ways in which they have adapted the farm space at AOVS to accommodate these varying degrees of ability.
“So I try I try as hard as I can. So one of the things for me is I used the farm in a way is really harmful to my body. [00:04:03] You know, doing things the hard way. And so, you know, I try to I try to, you know, on one hand, lay stuff out in a way that is accessible. [00:04:13] So we try to space things in a way that, you know, motorized chairs or some like that can can get through, create pathways that people can get around and enjoy the gardening with their physical mobility issues.
Try as much as possible to select tools that are usable by by anyone, right. We use a variety of hand tools and we try to try to select the ones that are ergonomic to get around those. And then we also know for folks that have have mobility issues also try to create opportunities to kind of bring the farm to them. So my colleagues will, for instance, provide you may not be able to not hear because they have they have the physical ability or time, an ability to do so, create create like herb buckets or flower planters, stuff like that they make and brings those other sites. We kind of see like we can't see it in the recording obviously, but like you know creating pathways with landscape fabric litter wide enough to accommodate chairs as well as our farm equipment. That kind of that kind of thing.”
I asked Becca a similar question and she said
So we have tried to make the farm an open space and to be relevant to the population that's living here. Working with an older generation that have a variety of mobility issues. We wanted to make the farm accessible. So physically, the ways that we've done that are to try to provide really wide pathways. We have 88 compliant raised beds on the farm and as we build out the flower farm, we'll have wide pathways as well as 88 compliant flower beds down there. We also strive to, in my role at least, to really provide opportunities for folks that have varying ability levels to get involved with the farm. So, we have a couple of folks that work with us in their fields, but not everyone is willing or able to do that. And so by kind of looking at the farm less as a production value and more as a human service, we've tried to open up different opportunities for folks to be involved, such as, you know, the plantings and in the greenhouse.
And we've been able to work with another organization. To provide their starts, their plant starts as well, and so by looking for opportunities like that, we increase our greenhouse production and increase the amount of opportunities that we can provide for folks to be involved in there. We also are using flower bouquet making as a way to help folks who don't have the dexterity, maybe to or the endurance to be in their fields. But they can be involved with the farm and and both from a very tactile method of actually making the flower bouquets, but then also kind of invoking some creativity in art therapy, in developing those bouquets and giving residents a sense of ownership over the farm by allowing them to see those flower bouquets in both in the community and distributed throughout Alpha Omega.”
Becca and Chris have worked hard to make the farm and flower garden accessible to the residents living in the space. I asked them what it was like working with the residents of this unique urban farm. Becca said
So working with the residents can be challenging. Not you know, a lot of people have misconceptions about farming and agriculture, that it's just having a green thumb or that anybody can start a farm and things like that. It does take much more detailed intention and passion than that. And so sometimes there's a little bit of a disconnect with us and the residents because the staff working at the farm is much younger than the then the resident population. Right. So it can be challenging at times to kind of redirect residents that are my grandfather's age, for example. But that's where I think having to develop those connections and relationships really comes in handy. And I think it's so important to this space that we cultivate it out here, because when you have those meaningful relationships and personal connections, then knowledge sharing is much easier to come by. Right. Both in me sharing knowledge with the residents and in them sharing knowledge with me. Right. It can come across if you're not careful. It can come across in like a condescending way. But I think we've done a really good job of creating space for that kind of comfort and learning on the farm.
Chris gave a similar response saying
Well, I've got one of I think with the part of working here is being able to have, you know, one on one relationships with people like Ed so Ed, who's our lead gardener. You know, I have a special relationship because, you know, it's it's a different thing for a farmer, for the people that you're feeding your customers for states and also like live at your farm, which is essentially the situation we're in. [00:08:10] Our farm is at a residential site. So for me as a farmer, it's a it's a kind of a unique challenge to farm basically in the front yard of the people that are going to eat the produce and then for them to also work with me. And so while that creates some types of challenges because things do you have to look better than other farms might, it also is a cool, cool opportunity because you can kind of explore the meaning of that, of what the food means, what the farm means in a special way that you wouldn't otherwise necessarily be able to do with your customers.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ed and he was kind enough to share his story with me, as he explained what brought him to AOVS. What brought me here? well basically the same thing that brings most other people here man. People living on the streets kind of lose their way. You need to look for friendly forces and I'm very wondering if veterins had these resources. So I came here.
Well, actually, I went to the V.A. and blood pressure was kind of at the same time I was I was homeless. I went to the V.A. and I told him about it and they sent me to the third floor and he recommended come out here and talk to Alpha Omega people. That was eight and a half years years ago. I’m still taking the blood pressure medicine, but I’ve been out here about 9 years.
It was very interesting getting Ed’s perspective as his positionality as a residential employee provides a firsthand account of how residents feel about AOVS, and food justice issues. As a result, asked Ed what his favorite thing about working on the farm was, and how he felt about living here. He said
Getting paid (laugter) No, no, no.
I love the vegetables man. I love mustard greens and I actually. Im one of those guys thinks that American is eating wrong everybodys eating wrong and if your not part of this your part of the problem man. If if your doing a little on the right side of the ledger. That’s where I like to be at.
Really it’s all been fun.
Its a bunch of great guys out here. it really becomes kind of like a family thing. I actually think Chris is going to become kind of family ish out here because it's kind of family man like brothers. It's actually a brotherhood thing here and everybody here looks out for one another. We don’t have crime here. We don't have drug abuse. We don't have many people harassing us all the time about this or that. The institution I understand some time, man, if you don't have money what’s what. It is just a great place, I really like this place. It's an oasis in the middle of uh Iraq or something.
Hearing about Ed’s perspective on the farm inspired me to ask him how he felt about food related issues in Memphis.
I don't know about Memphis, but a lot of my folks had high blood pressure because I don't eat well. I'm not the right shape and I don't eat pork man and I think the diet and a lot of diets that people are eating are contributing to health, not being what it should be. And I think, like I said before, even im part of problems. If your not trying to help then You're hurting people. And out here were doing really well I really enjoyed doing it because I enjoyed getting the people man here. I just enjoy the whole enviorment [00:04:40] I have learned about the meaning of what carbon is. It's just an experienced man at my age It's exciting that.
Ed’s insights were quite valuable. It was good to see that the residents enjoyed the environment that AOVS was providing. I knew that working within a non-profit organization comes with a lot of issues, as a result, I asked Chris about the struggles they were dealing with at AOVS, and the ways in which the Memphis community could better support them.
Chris said to me I mean, there's all sorts of challenges. I think one of one is I think this challenge goes for it for agriculture. Agricultural projects in general is that people are very excited about what agricultural and agriculture can do from providing fresh food and environmental benefits. The social benefits element as we've been talking about. But there's also, I think, an expectation barrier for what agriculture can accomplish. Mainly that while we do raise money for the project through sales of our produce, you know, we're farming is not a particular lucrative way to raise money and so that that's always a challenge is coming up with the money, not just seeing the farm, but to sustain the therapeutic side of things and to get people to understand that, you know, the farm can't can't do everything because, you know, it's it's a farm as you know, we arent on Wall Street or something like that anyway. So I think that the expectation of what a farm can accomplish in just farming is such a different way to spend your time that it can be difficult to manage agricultural employees, because the way we use our time and easier time is so much different than.’
When I asked how the community could better support their organization, he said sure. I mean, so one of the ways really would be. I mean, there is a couple ways. You know, we're always interested in partnerships.
Volunteers are great. But longer term partnerships are really where you get the most benefit, I think. And so with with universities or other institutions, you know, I think some longer term partnerships would be really advantageous to our projects.
The other thing is that I really think that one of the biggest things that people can do to support projects like ours is buy food from us, you know, not just from us, but from any any sustainable agriculture project is them. That's the number one. Number one thing is we need people that want to pay a little bit more to buy produce that has an environmental and social impact. That sounds kind of like a maybe a little bit crass like. Oh, yeah. Each buy our produce. But I mean, it really is like as far as supporting sustainable agriculture project buy our produce. I mean, that's a that's a big thing. But yeah. All right. Sorry I got this thing to say about it. You know, from the veteran side is if you come visit our farmers market with, for instance, you know, you get a chance or our farm, you'll get a chance to interact with with military veterans. And I really think that's something that more people should do. I think a lot of people have assumptions about what veterans are like or who they are or that sort of thing. Aside from, you know, helping everyone socially, I think it'd be great if everybody, you know, spent some time talking to veterans and really like getting to know these folks certainly improve, you know, more than just more than just this project.
AOVS is doing important work here in Memphis. They are providing a unique space of healing for disabled veterans, while simultaneously working as a certified organic farm that is distributing fresh produce to Memphis. It is important to support food justice-oriented organizations such as AOVS who are doing this kind of work, as their multifaceted approach is addressing many of the food related issues people are facing. This organization is providing a meaningful livelihood for people who tend to be on the peripheries in our society. As such, it is important that we bolster organizations like AOVS that are making an impact in the lives of disabled veterans. As Chris stated earlier, it is important to remember that we can support nonprofits such as AOVS by buying their food at the Sam Coopers farmers market. We can also support them with our time through volunteering, or with our money by donating to their organization. In doing so we are providing support to a much needed nonprofit here in Memphis. Thank you for listening.