By EMMA HOPKINS-O’BRIEN
Indiana Correspondent MARSHALL, Ind. — At this year’s Indiana Forage Council meeting, Blue Yonder Farm’s owner and operator Sarah Creech spent an hour explaining the practical and spiritual benefits of her pasture-based farm. “I had no plans to run a farm; I just literally wanted to have animals and try some things on my own,” Creech said, detailing her process. “I started out with just five chickens.” Her journey started in the military where she served as a surgical nurse. She sustained an injury and received a medical discharge. While returning to civilian life, she experienced severe difficulties with post-traumatic stress disorder, like many veterans returning from conflicts. Her husband, Chuck, who was also in the military, was a great support to her, even while oversees, calling the hospital where she was situated nearly every day from wherever he was. Once he was back from his tour, he and Creech decided to travel for a while, until something happened that would change her life forever: He was diagnosed with colon cancer. They worked through Chuck’s treatment together and spent a great deal of time researching how eating healthy, fresh foods can slow or even reverse the progression of medical conditions. However, his condition was advanced, and Creech said he passed away, going down fighting. In the aftermath, she got involved with a veteran program called Armed to Farm. “We were a group of veterans interested in agriculture, and got to tour a bunch of farms and see what we might be interested in doing,” Creech explained. “When I completed the program I said, ‘I want to go home and start a farm, and I want to work with military veterans.’” Her first venture was into chickens, which she fenced in under an old trampoline. They were soon killed when a weasel invaded the henhouse. She worked through the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to find out what the land she owned was suited to produce. She wanted to have diverse products, and by 2012 had set up a full-fledged operation that now includes pasture-based sheep, chicken, and beef cattle, along with orchard fruit, honey, maple syrup, and mushrooms. “I got 200 logs and plugged all this spawn in them which, I’ll tell you, takes forever,” she said about her shiitake mushrooms, which are part of her farm’s concept of diversity. “But that was three years ago, and they’re still creating mushrooms, so that’s one of my favorite products.” She found tending to the various needs of the farm produced in her a healing effect, emotionally and spiritually. Creech decided to commit herself and the farm to training and working with the Indiana chapter of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition, where she continues to help veterans discover profitable small-scale agriculture and promotes healing through working with nature. “We’ve had a ton of hands-on training on my farm,” she said. “We’ve done some programs very similar to Armed to Farm, as well as social get-togethers once a month. One of the biggest programs here is the Indiana Grown Homegrown by Heroes program, which is a great marketing tool.” Homegrown by Heroes offers a special label for veterans to put on their products, indicating they were produced by ex-military. Creech’s organic operation emphasizes free-range eggs and chicken, which she and her family butcher on-farm. “I think animals are very important on a sustainable farm,” she noted. “I wanted to have different products that kind of built into each other. The animals produce waste to fertilize the crops; I do compost piles, we feed our vegetables to our animals.” Like most farmers, Creech continues working to improve her operation. Recently she has obtained NRCS grants to create rotational grazing paddocks. In the near future she also hopes to add silvo-pasture, which is an incorporation of pasture into forests. She believes farming is a powerful way of providing healing in people’s lives, which is a core value of her operation. “I think nature kind of mirrors those difficult times, just like there’s forest fires or all these natural disasters, taking you to ground zero – nature has a way of restoring that,” she said. “It’s about finding that hope and restoration and creating a system that’s based on capitalizing on all on all the different pieces of a healthy ecosystem, and building that dream farm.” More information on the Indiana Forage Council can be found at https://indianaforage.org |
