Farm Journal: An end to the season and a look at a new beginning

by MaryAnne McMillan, Horticultural Therapist Registered

In March of 2009, Allies, Inc., a non-profit agency in Hamilton, New Jersey, that serves the needs of the Developmentally Disabled, introduced the idea of a new farm program for the people it serves.

I had been hired a year earlier as a horticultural therapist and had overseen the development of 12 gardens in nine counties, working with Linda Barton, the community connector for Allies. By May of 2009, we had Belgian Draft horses plowing an acre of land in Allentown, and so the Allies Farm program was born.

How fast that first farming season passed, from planting in late May to the harvesting that continued well into October. The community support we received through that first year grew from the initial assistance of a nursery in Allentown who started our plants, the garden club gave us a monetary gift, to the people and businesses of Allentown who came out and patronized us through produce sales and volunteering on the farm.

Volunteers gave so freely of their time with the earliest planting including Master Gardeners from Monmouth County. Horticultural therapy interns drove from as far as Philadelphia and Cranford to lend a hand and work with our members as they also worked on their internship requirements.

We were also fortunate to have Ashley, a student intern from the College of New Jersey, Sarah from Scranton University and Josh, a recent graduate of Rutgers University. They worked tirelessly in heat, rain and raw weather as we planted, mulched and harvested the garden beds.

Our four 150-foot garden beds produced an enormous amount of produce including tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, cucumbers and all kinds of herbs.

It was the third wettest summer on record and this, perhaps, was a blessing in disguise. The time we would have spent watering was used to cultivate and harvest our plants. We donated well over 1,000 pounds of produce to the local Allentown food bank and to our group homes; we sold produce to the local hardware store which had a weekly farm market, to the Allies Office Farm Market, to the restaurants in Allentown.