Featured Story: Growing Veggies and Community at Betty’s Farm
Gardening has been part of life at Bittersweet from the very beginning, and this tradition is alive and well at all three of our locations! This year, the participants at Betty’s Farm experimented with new raised bed garden boxes and had great success!
This spring, each participant was given their own garden box. Don Snook, a supporter of Betty’s Farm, donated handmade signs with each participant’s name for their garden box for a special, personal touch. Each participant had the opportunity to choose which veggies they wanted to grow in their box this year.
Since our founding in 1983, Bittersweet’s philosophy has emphasized meaningful and motivating work. We have found that processes like gardening-- with a clear beginning and end, observable progress along the way, and a rewarding end result-- are immensely beneficial for people with autism. Growing their favorite veggies in their own garden boxes provides even deeper meaning, motivation, and sense of responsibility!
Betty’s Farm invited the community to join the gardening fun, too! They offered garden boxes to the families of participants and staff and to participants at Marimor Industries, another provider serving people with disabilities in Allen County. This enabled people to come together safely outdoors all season long, growing community alongside their veggies!
Day Program Manager, Jerry Hunt, shared that one of the participants from Marimor was able to return to his passion for gardening after several years without a gardening space of his own. Hunt’s own grandsons, Jakxon and Jeremiah, were also able to garden this year for the very first time. “If it weren’t for Betty’s Farm,” Hunt said, “they never would’ve had an opportunity to enjoy this experience.”
When it came time to harvest, the seeds of community also yielded fruit! The participants had the choice to take their produce home, share with one another, or donate it to Our Daily Bread, a food pantry in Lima. Many of them chose to share their harvest with one another and the local community. The families who enjoyed the produce remarked that it was far more flavorful than the produce from the store and even from their own home gardens. This is the difference that love, care, respect, and community make.
The participants and staff at Betty’s Farm are already dreaming about next year’s garden boxes! This year, there were 27 garden boxes on site at Betty’s Farm. Next year, they plan to add nine more! Of course, in addition to growing more veggies, they are planning to grow more community, too! Hunt says, “We hope to invite more providers from Allen County to bring their participants out so we can all garden together.”
Time will tell which veggies the participants choose to grow next year, but this much is certain: relationships, community, love, and respect will continue to grow in the fertile soil of the garden boxes at Betty’s Farm!
To read more stories like this from all three Bittersweet locations, click here or click the “Download Full Newsletter” button above.
