Moments in a Box

 February, 2022

“Why Helping Friendly Farm? How did you come up with the idea to combine animals, gardening, and sensory play in one place?” This is a question I’m often asked. My typical response is usually along the lines of, “l love animals and growing my own food… There aren’t enough non-facilitated sensory gyms around … I love working with people with special needs…” This is all true. However, as many times as I’ve said it, I never really pieced together the nuances behind the why. Why goats? Why gardens? Why open-play sensory spaces? I’ve discovered that the answer lies in moments. Believing as I do in the power of extraordinarily ordinary moments, I realize looking back that there were three sets of such moments which led me to eventually conceive of the three components to Helping Friendly Farm. 

My daughter was in occupational therapy for years while we lived in New Jersey.  This meant that for years, her younger brother would sit in the waiting room with me, thumbing through half filled coloring books, eating stale snacks from the bottom of my bag, and playing with the old toys, as well as the various miniature cars and trucks I used to schelp everywhere. He knew every nook and cranny of that waiting room and would happily show other visiting siblings where the broken pieces of the toys were kept or where to find blank printer paper. Most importantly, he knew that when the big clock hand was on the five, it meant that he would have his chance to play in the “fun time” room with his sister. The moment that the clock struck 5:25, he would grab my hand and pull me toward the therapy gym where my daughter was completing her session, a huge smile on his face. It took him no time to kick off his shoes and run to the swing, the trampoline, the climbing wall, the belly scooters - whatever her occupational therapist had put out that day. I cherished those brief moments of watching my daughter show her little brother what new skill she had mastered while he tried to imitate her. They would put aside the bickering, tattle-tailing, and competition for my attention, and instead shouted words of encouragement to each other... For four minutes. At 5:29, shoes were gathered and we were rushed out so the next client could get started. Twice a week, those eight minutes were golden. I wondered why there wasn’t a place for siblings to play together in a sensory gym just for fun? There were so many kids we saw week in and week out while in that waiting room. Surely their parents were wondering the same thing.

Fast forward five or so years. We were living in California and I was volunteering at the local elementary school to help with their garden science curriculum. I was assigned to a dedicated inclusion classroom and because I am a special education teacher, I always had the students with special needs in my garden group. Often, when I’d arrive, there would be one boy with ADHD in the back of the classroom, spinning and bouncing in a chair, while another boy with developmental delays sat at his desk, staring quietly at a blank paper. These two boys could not have presented more differently from each other. Yet, the moment the bell rang signaling that it was time for gardening, both of them would snap to attention and follow directions perfectly, allowing them to get to the gardens as quickly as possible. Once there, I took note of how each boy interacted with the environment. The boy with ADHD usually wanted to dig in the dirt, pull weeds, and use the pitchfork to turn compost, while the boy with delays was content to plant seeds, track beetles, and harvest the vegetables. Our garden classes brought moments of joy to both of them. With dirty hands and dimpled smiles, they would return to their classroom and attend to the next lesson without the difficulty they were exhibiting when I arrived. The gardens were a reset for their autonomic nervous systems.

A few years later, my son was diagnosed with PANS, an autoimmune disease that changed his life. Almost overnight, my neurotypical, active son was being ravaged by his own immune system, making every day tasks almost unbearable. We were crushed. How could I help?  What could make him better? Many nights, I stayed up googling for answers until my eyes were blurry. One night when my husband and I were down the internet rabbit hole, we found references to the importance of a healthy microbiome for people with autoimmune diseases. While I was researching ways to improve my childrens’ microbiome diversity, I found an article that cited eating dirt. Not just eating diverse organic foods, but actually consuming dirt could be beneficial for the immune system. It turns out those dirty hands of my gardening boys could have had a biological impact!  I had a distinct moment of clarity that our family needed to get back to nature. By the following week, we decided that in the interest of mental and physical wellbeing, we should consider moving to a farm. 

Later that year, we were visiting an orchard near my parents’ home in Delaware when the woman behind the counter asked if we wanted to pay extra to feed the goats. It was all of twenty-five degrees outside in December in the Northeast. Of course we wanted to feed the goats!! Like in most petting zoos, the goats were very interested in us when we had treat pellets in our palms, but not so much when we were empty handed. They were so fun to watch play. There was an elevated labyrinth of planks which the goats traversed with such surefooted goofiness that it made all of us want to stay out in the freezing cold to watch them. Every once and a while, one or two would come back to us to see if we had treats for them. Their horizontal and rectangular pupils were mesmerizing. and the way they jumped made us laugh. For a few moments, the jet-lagged, complaining kids (okay… and mom) were completely entertained. The goats were that cool. But, we agreed, it was too bad they were so programmed to only come to us humans when baited with treats. When my husband arrived a few days later, we brought him to see the goats and he, too, loved them. Upon returning to California, I bought my first book on how to raise and train goats.

So there you have it - a series of ordinary moments in three different states involving occupational therapy, gardens, and goats. Moments that lay dormant in my mind, compartmentalized in different brain boxes, until one day driving through New Hope, PA, those moments began to amalgamate into something no longer ordinary on their own. They became extraordinary - an idea of a place where families could play together in nature, with goats, and in a barn full of sensory equipment. Four years later, Helping Friendly Farm is finally becoming a reality.