For several years, the Denver Botanical Gardens Chatfield Farms have offered free hands-on farming classes for veterans at their working farm outside the city. Colorado AgrAbility Project staff Jim Craig was invited to teach a session on ag injury avoidance, safety, and assistive technology. As the program developed, it became obvious that the veteran students had a need for exposure to farm business planning and access to credit.
Three years ago, Jim was asked to expand his presentation into sections on assistive technology and farm economics. This class structure has proven to be widely accepted by the vets in the program and has now resulted in a small quantity of regular referrals of disabled veteran farmers to the project. Jim is capturing statistics from the classes and is hopeful that these experiences will assist in writing a USDA grant to fund expanded farmer veteran business planning and access to credit classes.
Submitted by Jim Craig