Michigan

Dennis Johnston of Hubbardston is getting acclimated to his new log lifter for his wood burner. The device was built by engineering students at MSU as their capstone senior project. Team members included Steven Lund, Hayden May, Phil Skinkle, Nicholas Scibilia and Nadia Amira. Check out the video on the Michigan AgrAbility Facebook page.

Michigan Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) and Michigan AgrAbility are continuing to build an awesome partnership! Michigan AgrAbility staff promote the many events sponsored by Michigan VFC and Michigan FVC members support Michigan AgrAbility by promoting the work and benefits received from Michigan AgrAbility at fundraising events. Check out all of the Michigan FVC events and pictures on the Michigan AgrAbility Facebook page.

Staff thanks Jeremy Huffman (Michigan FVC) and Samantha Modreske for being their AgrAbility ambassadors at Easter Seals Walk With Me event! Walk With Me is an Easter Seals fundraiser and is an opportunity for clients to enjoy fun and an evening at John Ball Zoo. Jeremy Huffman spoke about how AgrAbility assisted him with setting priorities for his farm and thanked Easter Seals for their work in helping veterans. Samantha Modreske shared how AgrAbility helped her be able to be more active in her family's hog farm.

Staff Changes

Judy Wood came to Michigan AgrAbility with her bags packed; that is, packed with experience and talent in organization and building database systems. Judy is a part time volunteer who is working to build a database, something she realized would be useful to the organization during her initial interview.

Judy is a former high school teacher, later working in the healthcare system where she did IT application, support and user training. She later moved into corporate online IT training in Tennessee.
She also worked for a software development company in Alabama, writing software documentation and creating online learning for a U.S. Army Corp of Engineers project.

She returned to her roots in Michigan and worked at a Goodwill Career Center in Grand Rapids, coaching participants in computer job searches, completing online applications, and creating resumes. There she stumbled upon an ad searching for volunteers with AgrAbility and offered her services to build a Microsoft Access database.

Judy lives on a hobby farm with her son, daughter-in-law, two grand- children, a goat, and some rabbits.

Submitted by Deb Chester