The mission of Left Foot Organics extends well beyond that of most market farms that provide fresh produce to subscribers and other customers. Ann Vandeman, the director of this three-year-old non-profit venture, thinks as much about the experience she provides her farm hands as she does about what comes off of the fields.

Left Foot Organics offers adults with developmental disabilities the opportunity to grow organic produce while strengthening their social skills and self-reliance. Ann explains, “Our purpose is to provide employment and life skills training to people with disabilities and to use these activities as a means of educating the public about people with disabilities and the need for inclusion.” Left Foot Organics demonstrates the contribution that people with disabilities can make to their community through a concrete product: good certified organic vegetables and berries. Products people want and that have value.

For Ann, this venture is very personal. She explains, “I started this because I have a daughter with Down syndrome. I was working for the Department of Agriculture in Washington DC; when she was born, I wanted to come home to the Northwest. I wanted to get out of the office and into the fields actually producing something other than reports about data, and I wanted to be working with people with disabilities.” The field of horticultural therapy – using horticultural activities to achieve therapeutic results for people with special needs – combines Ann’s two passions. After volunteering for a similar project in Washington DC, Ann returned home and started hoeing in 2001.

Left Foot Organics leases two acres south of Olympia, within sight of Interstate 5. Already, the farm employs ten people with developmental disabilities, three additional part-time staff, Ann, and three volunteers. Recently, they have added a youth employment program in collaboration with a youth service agency in town. Ann says, “That is really important for us because it integrates our workforce. We are mixing up these typically developing youth and youth with disabilities, exposing both of those groups to each other and modeling the kind of community we want to create.”

Ann describes her vision: “We want the community that these folks live in to be welcoming them – in employment, in school, in social life, in public life – and so we’re creating that kind of environment here on the farm where everybody is working together toward common goals and contributing to the best of their ability.” Ann explains that it doesn’t matter if one person can bunch chard and another person can dig potatoes. Everybody does whatever they can do and they do their best. The result is a wonderful product that people in the community want to buy and so they are compelled to interact with someone with disabilities that they might otherwise ignore. Ann says, “Through this transaction — someone buying snow peas, or whatever, from a person with disabilities — we’re creating a relationship that acknowledges the contributions of people with disabilities in the community.”

Left Foot Organics concentrates on direct marketing because it creates the social interactions they find so important. Says Ann, “We sell shares, and our customers become invested, and they come out for potlucks!” The farm feeds 40 subscribers off of just two acres, providing weekly boxes of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. Left Foot produce is also sold at several area farmers’ markets, as well as in a handful of local stores. Last year a local school district bought potatoes and carrots, and Ann hopes to see that partnership grow. “Selling our produce to the schools doesn’t get us as close to the consumer as I would like,” she remarks, “but the schools have surplus land that they have offered to local farmers.” At some point Ann would like to see students with developmental disabilities working together with their typically developing peers on school land to produce food for the students.

Over 50 varieties of vegetables – from arugula to zucchini – grow in soil that is visibly rocky. Left Foot Organics tills part of an old dairy farm, and the office is in the old milking parlor. Says Ann, “None of this land had been in production for a long time, so just coming in from scratch and trying to get the soil into shape has been a huge challenge.” Fortunately, there hadn’t been chemicals applied for some time so they were able to get organic certification immediately. Manure and cover crops are helping to build the soil fertility, but the weeds and rocks remain formidable. “I feel bad about running back and forth over the field with heavy equipment because that is not good, it compacts the soil,” Ann laments, “but weed control is one of our biggest problems, so we have to. The rocks just destroy equipment, rip the tillers, so that’s been really difficult.”

Farm manager Beth Leimbach acknowledges, “This land has been a tough teacher. The soil fertility, rocks and weeds are really a challenge on this particular farm, and sometimes added to that is this more complex staff and having enough people who have enough time to get the job done.” But she has learned as much from the people with whom she works as from the land. “My learning,” Beth says, “is that change may not happen for people with developmental disabilities as fast as I’m used to seeing change. It takes a season and it’s so organic that way, just like the farm. You can’t learn farming in one year – you have to do it several years in a row.”

Ann hopes to grow Left Foot Organics to provide more opportunities for people with disabilities. “I’d like to have ten acres and pasture and some small animals,” she says. “If we could do sheep and spinning and weaving, then we’d have people working year round. And if we had some chickens and eggs, we could provide a more varied experience for the growers.” A greenhouse built last year, with time and materials donated from local carpenter and electrical unions, means they can start their growing season a month earlier this year.

Ann would like to see a resurgence of vocational farming programs. “All the large mental institutions, prisons, and residential facilities for people with developmental disabilities used to have working farms,” she explains. “Then there were issues around compelling people to work, and so they were all shut down. They kind of threw the baby out with the bathwater because these activities are valuable to people, and if they could find a way to do it so it isn’t coercive or somehow exploitive, why not bring those back so people have something productive and meaningful to do?”

A volunteer crew from a local minimum security prison has put in time at Left Foot Organics. Ann says, “They are good guys, hard working, and they like helping and knowing they are doing something really valuable – like putting up bean trellises – things that take a lot of people over a short period of time to accomplish. It’s been really nice to have their help and I think more of that would be valuable.”

On this farm, the fresh produce is a valuable byproduct of the real work. Says Ann, “Farm activity is good for people with disabilities. It has a lot of different benefits: physically, fine motor development, improved coordination, improved cognitive function, and learning social skills working as a team and interacting with the public.” She continues, “Like all of us, when people with developmental disabilities have meaningful work that gives them a sense of accomplishment and purpose, and brings opportunities to contribute to their community and be recognized for that, it improves their quality of life.”

Contact
Ann M. Vandeman, Executive Director
PO Box 12772
Olympia, WA 98508
Tel: 360-754-1849
Email: info@leftfootorganics.org
www.leftfootorganics.org