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Festival fetes harvest fun at Somers group home

CANDACE CHASE/Daily Inter Lake | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 12 years, 4 months AGO
by CANDACE CHASE/Daily Inter Lake
| September 9, 2012 7:33 AM

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<p>Sara Maldonodo prepares to feed the chickens and check for eggs at the Lighthouse Christian Home on Wednesday, September 5, near Somers.</p>

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<p>Jamey Herron, front, and Davey Gonzales gather chard and other greens from the garden on Wednesday, September 5, at the Lighthouse Christian Home.</p>

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<p>Sara Maldonodo of the Lighthouse Christian Home walks through rows of chard on Wednesday, September 5, near Somers. Staff, residents and volunteers are preparing for the 8th Annual Harvest Festival Fundraiser which will be held on Saturday, September 15 from noon to 5 p.m.</p>

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<p>Nathan Bunyan brings onions and other greens from the garden on Wednesday morning, September 5, at the Lighthouse Christian Home.</p>

A brilliant blue sky and quickly warming sun set the scene for a perfect fall day at Lighthouse Christian Home’s farm on North Somers Road.

Two registered miniature Hereford calves frolicked in the pasture while three hulking pigs chowed down in their new barn near the tidy chicken coop, where 32 (at last count) chickens lay upwards of 18 eggs a day to help feed the 12 adults with intellectual disabilities who call the farm home.

But this year, the newly expanded garden has been getting special attention as residents and staff prepare for the annual Harvest Festival fundraiser.

Shirley Willis, executive director of the home, said they were finally able to use their greenhouse to start plants such as pumpkins for what they hope proves a record harvest. This season follows several years of trying to finish the greenhouse in time to boost production of their garden.

“This year we had the right combination of volunteers and finances,” Willis said. “It really helped the garden be more productive.”

Even with a cool spring stretching well into June, the garden tended by residents, staff and many community volunteers cooperated by offering up potatoes, lettuce, squash, cucumbers and beets for consumption in early September. Tall corn promised a healthy harvest to tide the animals over the winter.

Activity will move into high gear this week as Lighthouse Christian Home gets ready for the hundreds of local people who come each year for a taste of farm life mixed with a lot of fun at the festival on the farm’s 40 acres in Lower Valley.

“This is the only fundraiser that we hold on site that we invite the public to,” Willis said. “We’re trying to involve the community in what it’s like — fun and hard work.”

Founded in 2004, the faith-based facility allows residents to live as a family while the 12 staff supervise in shifts covering 24 hours a day. As a private-pay residential home, the organization must raise about 40 percent of its operating costs to keep the cost affordable for its 12 residents.

Some pay as little as $250 a month.

“No one pays more than $500,” Willis said. “We think that’s reasonable for normal people to pay.”

She said they can charge so little because they have no mortgage, hold fundraising events like the festival, raise much of their own food and depend on a large contingent of community volunteers to help with nearly every aspect of the operation.

As an example, Dottie Maitland, development director, said that a group of master gardeners trained by the county extension service assisted with the home’s vegetable operation this year along with many others.

“The church next door [Aletheia Christian Fellowship] sent 40 people over,” she said. “They helped us plant our garden.”

Other groups provided labor to build the pig and cow barns as well as get the greenhouse up and running. Another benefactor donated a rototiller.

Maitland took the opportunity to put out a plea for more equipment.

“What we need most of all in the whole wide world is a tractor, a big farm tractor,” she said.

On Wednesday, Americorps member Bud Kupka was helping out as part of the service learning program at Flathead Valley Community College. He said he started the day giving haircuts and trimming nails, then he helped clean vegetables.

“I do a little bit of everything,” he said, smiling.

The experience benefits his mission to become a social worker. Kupka said he also provides some diversity as one of the few male volunteers.

Willis said Lighthouse Christian Home welcomes all manner of people wanting to give of their time.

“The best volunteers are the ones who keep showing up,” she said.

As the farm family sat down to lunch in their spacious dining room, the therapeutic value of their life on the farm was evident as they happily chatted with their supervisors and one another and eagerly anticipated the annual festival Saturday.

According to Willis, she felt affirmed about their model by a visitor from the Netherlands this summer who told her that care farms were expanding all over his country because of their success in serving the disabled, chemically dependent and elderly.

“They do the same thing we do, but they do it across the board,” she said. “It’s such a better way for people to feel productive. It’s so affirming to see that we’re on the same page.”

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