Youth Harvest Program

The Youth Harvest Project is a therapeutic, service-oriented, employment program for “at-risk” teens at our Rattlesnake Community (PEAS) Farm. The program offers five teens with the experience of immersion in the dynamic community that comes together each growing season to grow high quality produce for the Missoula Food Bank and Poverello Center (as well as a 80 member CSA).

Beginning in April of 2004 five youth selected to be a part of the Youth Harvest Project arrived at the Rattlesnake Farm after school and trekked across the muddy fields to the greenhouse where they mixed potting soil, planted seeds, and began to learn about what it takes to be a part of a working community farm.

Four of the participants came out of Youth Drug Court as a result of the courts recognition that innovative approaches to working with youth often provide a depth of experience and care that moves beyond strictly punitive measures and the limitations of traditional therapy. For some there was resistance and this became the initial ground to be worked. Before long the immediacy of the farm’s demands engaged everyone in something tangible and real. The fifth youth eagerly sought out an interview upon hearing of the program from one of her Missoula Youth Home staff. Her enthusiasm and commitment to her life and the world around her became inspirational to us all. This coming season we will employ her at one of our community gardens sites.

Soon school was out and summer was in full swing. The core crew of university students had settled into a daily rhythm at the farm, working in the fields together in the morning and then sharing a family style lunch together in the barn around the long wooden table. The teens became a part of this community, following the same schedule and working side by side with this inspired group of people. The summer brought the fields to life with acres of plants to be weeded, watered, and nurtured toward maturity. It was not long before there was an abundance of produce to be harvested. The teens harvested and delivered the vegetables to the Missoula Food Bank and the Poverello Center. They also piled it upon the table in the barn in a colorful display for the CSA members to pick up. They gradually eased into the work, the richness of relationships, and the recognition that they were providing a very basic yet vital service to the larger Missoula community. There were daily issues to be addressed while the corn was thinned or the squash weeded – from punctuality, to the understanding and development of a work ethic, to the recovery from the loss of a boyfriend or the perceived insensitivity of a parent. We also carved out time each week to take a dip in the creek after lunch and sit as a group in the shade of the towering cottonwoods, discussing the difficulties of their young lives.

The beginning of school interrupted the work that was needed to be done as most of the heaviness of harvest still lay in the fields. The teens returned a few days a week after school to help, the familiarity of the work and place easing them back into themselves again after a day involved in tasks that made less immediate sense. We tossed pumpkins to one another across the field and gently into the back of the idle truck. We pulled arm loads of onions out of the soil and hauled them into the loft of the barn, hanging them from the rafters on long lines of twine to dry for storage. We dug in search of potatoes and spaded thousands of pounds of carrots out of the ground to be washed and eventually delivered to the Deer Lodge State Prison where they will be canned and shipped back to the Food Bank for distribution.

The weekend before Halloween the teens set out straw bales and piled them with pumpkins. An old cider press was positioned along side boxes of gleaned valley apples. Soon families arrived to carve pumpkins, press and drink cider and warm themselves around the fire on a fine autumn day. The fields were now bare and the work was done for another season. In the end the teens walked out of the fields this last time with more than a wage, more than school credit. What this is for each will still be growing in them long after we begin again in the spring with the next crew of young people.

Hopefully we will see each other as we drive through their neighborhoods in our freshly painted old delivery van. They will probably hear us first, the bass thumping too loudly as we drive our truck full of fresh produce, donated bread and other staples, on our way to deliver farm fresh goods to low income, homebound seniors.

Youth Harvest is made possible out of recognition from numerous Missoula agencies that innovative approaches are needed in supporting our teens. It is a collaboration between Garden City Harvest, Youth Drug Court, Human Resource Council, Willard Alternative High School, the University of Montana, Missoula Aging Services, and the Missoula Food Bank. We are funded by some of the above agencies, generous local individuals and businesses, and the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation.