| Nestled
into the gentle, time-worn hills of the Berkshire Mountains
7 miles east of Great Barrington, in western Massachusetts,
lies Gould Farm, a therapeutic community and working farmstead.
The daily routine here includes growing organic vegetables to
supply the community kitchen, an on-site farm stand and a bustling
roadhouse café; running a dairy and beef operation to
serve the community’s needs, provide raw material for
value-added products such as cheese and butter, and for limited
use by the café; a maple syrup operation and bakery (for
the community and for sale); careful management of a nature
trail and sustainably producing forest; and the treatment of
42 guests with psychiatric challenges such as severe depression,
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
With a belief that emotional healing can manifest through
hard work and service to one’s neighbors—in other
words, through earnest participation in community—visionary
religious thinker William J. Gould and his wife, Agnes, purchased
a rundown 650-acre farm and surrounding forestland in 1913
and put Will’s beliefs to the test. They began inviting
guests—some marginalized by society because of physical
or emotional challenges; others seeking a rural lifestyle
and a chance to serve—and soon had a fledgling community
under way.
Gould’s spiritual contemporaries wrote of his vision
with profound awe and respect: “For years I have lectured
to classes about the Kingdom of God, the rule of whose life
is set forth in the words of Jesus in the Gospels,”
wrote Professor Clayton R. Bowens from Meadville Theological
School in Pennsylvania. “After I had been at this Gould
Farm for a week I said, ‘This is it.’”
Will Gould literally gave his life in service to his community,
perishing of a heart attack in 1925 at the age of 57 while
fighting a fire that broke out on the farm. Four years later,
Agnes set Gould Farm up as a nonprofit trust. And this is
how Gould Farm operates today. It accepts no insurance and
no state or federal money. Those guests who can pay for treatment
do so, which helps to offset the cost for care of those who
cannot. Endowments, grants and the farm’s growing moneymaking
enterprises also help keep things running…along with
a wing and a prayer.
A day in the life
It’s 7 a.m. and a clear, crisp July morning as I walk
the half mile from our guest quarters—where I’ve
left my family to rest up following a late-night journey—to
Main House for breakfast and morning meeting. Just past a
field of broccoli and cauliflower ripe for picking, a handful
of community members—guests? workers? it’s difficult
to tell—try to redirect a cow that’s conquered
the fence and found its way to the road.
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"Animals and
people; nobody likes to be penned in."
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“Animals and people; nobody likes to be penned in,”
says Executive Director Cate as I relate the morning’s
excitement over farm-baked French toast dripping with farm-harvested
maple syrup and farm-churned butter.
Just outside the dining hall, the community forms a circle
for morning meeting. Announcements are read (comings and goings;
visitors introduced), everyone joins in song (“This
Train” accompanied by a farm guest on acoustic guitar),
the quote for the day is shared (“It is not what you
have that is your greatness; it is what you can give”)
and other business is taken care of before everyone splits
up into morning work parties.
I’m assigned to the garden crew, and it’s right
back to those beautiful heads of broccoli and cauliflower,
this time armed with harvest bags and a paring knife. Longtime
community member Steve has just taken over management of the
garden. “The therapeutic value of farming—just
planting a seed—it’s just amazing,” says
Steve, who arrived here as a volunteer in 1992. Like most
workers at Gould Farm, Steve lives here with his wife and
children. While it’s no longer a stringent requirement—Steve
himself recently bought a neighboring parcel of land and plans
to build there eventually—workers are encouraged to
live onsite with their families in order to engender a real
feeling of community. (Housing is one tangible reward of a
job that’s pretty much 24/7.)
“I call out the different things that need to be harvested,
and people do what they’re interested in,” Steve
says as he demonstrates the proper technique for liberating
a head of broccoli from its stalk.
Chard, kale, lettuce, spinach and green beans are also on
today’s list. Once the morning’s harvest is complete,
it’s hauled to the bottom of the Harvest Barn for cleaning,
weighing, packaging, labeling and storing. Some goes to the
kitchen, some goes to the Roadside Store & Café,
and some goes into the freezer for winter.
“We’re not certified organic, but we follow the
practices,” Steve explains. “That’s what
we tell people.” Those “people” are farm-stand
customers who show up weekly to buy produce at the farm’s
recently built Harvest Barn. In the late ’90s, the farm-stand
model took the place of a CSA, which was deemed too labor
intensive for the farm’s main focus.
“It kind of took away from the energy of working with
the guests,” Steve explains. “It was too hectic;
it just wasn’t good energy.
“We used to have a small farm stand by the roadside
store," Steve says, explaining that this was also tricky
considering logistical challenges such as lack of adequate
refrigeration. “This new farm stand [complete with walk-in
cooler] requires the least amount of energy and certainly
fits what we are doing here. And it opens up another opportunity
for leadership for guests.
“The CSA was certainly our most profitable, but in
spite of the profits it just didn’t seem to fit.”
This sentiment is echoed repeatedly throughout my two-day
immersion into Gould Farm: the place exists first of all for
the well-being and healing of the guests. As garden manager,
Steve has to consider, for instance, how guests on medications
might react to harvesting on a hot, humid day and be flexible
enough to make adjustments in the schedule.
"A lot of
times you’re balancing what’s good for the
people with what’s good for the garden. You try
to match it but if you can't, you always go with the people."
“A lot of times you’re balancing what’s
good for the people with what’s good for the garden,”
he observes. “You try to match it but if you can't,
you always go with the people. We’re not dependant on
what we grow, but we do depend on trying to make the program
as meaningful to guests as possible.”
'Patient' is a word you’ll never hear at Gould Farm.
In fact, one of my first observations as a visitor was that
I could not readily discern between worker, guest and volunteer.
As Cate tells me sometime during my stay, people are not defined
by their condition here, but define themselves through their
contributions to the community.
“This isn’t so-and-so with bipolar disorder,”
she says. “This is John the person who happens to be
dealing with this challenge.”
Chop wood, carry water
“There’s certainly nothing more grounding than
having your hands in the dirt and being outside,” says
Gould Farm guest Damian. While the freedom offered from day
one here can be a challenge to adapt to, especially for someone
coming right out of a clinical setting, it’s also literally
a breath of fresh air, he says. “I don’t think
it's natural to be inside all day.
“They’re not training people to be farmers; they’re
training them to have good work practices. When I leave here
I’ll have the confidence to say, “I’ve worked
for two years; I can hold down a 30-hour job or hold down
school, because I’ve been doing it.”
Guests are assigned jobs based on their particular limits
and challenges, Damian explains, within comfort zones that
also exercise those limits. “If your challenges are
social, you might go to the kitchen because you’ll have
to interact with people.” With the diversity of jobs
at Gould Farm, he says, it’s usually possible to match
a person’s particular therapeutic needs to a task that
needs doing.
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Guests are assigned
jobs based on their particular limits and
challenges.
"If your challenges
are social, you might go to the kitchen because
you’ll have to interact with people."
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Following a fabulous lunch of tempe stir-fry (vegans and
vegetarians are readily accommodated here) and a salad bar
stocked with fresh garden produce, I climb into a truck with
AmeriCorps volunteer C.J. and head down the hill to meet the
farm team, a few of whom are just returning from a 12-Step
meeting in town. It’s the farm team’s responsibility
to keep all the farm machinery in working order and to keep
the farm animals healthy and producing. Farm products include
milk, pork, beef, chicken, eggs, butter and cheddar cheese.
Like the working guests who invest their love and labor at
Gould Farm, the farm animals, too, are sometimes given special
deference—or given special roles—compared to what
life might be like on a more conventional farm. Wilbur, a
behemoth boar who can’t stand fences—and hasn’t
met one that could stop him—is spared from the breakfast
plate for sentimental reasons. The community votes to give
a beloved cow whose calf died in utero an expensive C-section
to try to save her life (it failed). Two Gould Farm workers
smuggle a newborn calf into a psych ward to lift the spirits
of a community member who’d taken a downturn (it worked).
For this community, therapy is not a one-way street, but
rather resembles the spokes of bicycle, with the human heart
as the hub. “It’s not just the therapeutic value
that we deliver to guests,” Cate explains. “It’s
the therapeutic value that we derive ourselves from the same
situation.”
“You go to Forestry and Grounds on your first day here;
they hand you a maul and they get you to chop wood,”
says Reid, a two-year guest and integral member of the farm
team. “Which is very bizarre if you’ve just come
out of a hospital where you’re not allowed to have shoelaces
or not allowed to have a razor. It’s very surreal.”
The value of that—besides offering a liberating feeling
of independence—says Reid, is the sense of responsibility
to community and what that brings. “If we don’t
get the wood chopped before it gets cold, people will freeze,”
she says matter-of-factly.
That sense of service, and the appreciation it cultivates,
translates to all the various jobs on the farm, she says,
and it’s what ultimately motivates people. “If
I miss milking, that cow is going to be in a lot of pain…
. Every job here impacts everyone, it’s not just mindless.
I think that’s how they get people engaged.”
For most guests, Gould Farm is a place to get one’s
bearings and build the social skills necessary to get back
out into society. For a few, it can also be a door to a new
vocation.
“I’m from New York City; I’ve never lived
in the country, and I’ve certainly never touched a cow,
so this was all new,” Reid explains, taking a quick
break in the shade before leading the cows in from pasture,
my 5-year-old daughter squealing in delight alongside her.
“When I leave here, I’m going to go work on another
farm and then go to vet school.”
Gould Farm is a far cry from Reid’s former life working
on Wall Street, an existence that also included psychiatric
hospitals, traditional therapies and halfway houses. “The
biggest therapy for me has been getting to spend time with
the animals. I’ve participated in five live births—talk
about life affirming.”
Reid says she realizes that the special nature of Gould Farm
also means that she’ll face some challenges when she
moves to another operation. “These cows, they’re
like puppy dogs. People don’t usually treat their farm
animals like pets. I don’t eat them…it makes me
sad. I have to think, how much of this can I handle?”
She confesses that part of the reason the farm spares the
cantankerous Wilbur is because she saved him when he was a
wee little pig. She also admits casting a vote for the unsuccessful
C-section.
“They’re not looking at the bottom line, and
they’ve allowed us to be this way,” she says.
“It’s not how most farms are run.”
Reid also views the work-as-therapy model as somewhat of
a tradeoff.
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"Here, I believe
that work—doing work and improving one’s
state of mind—is the primary therapy,
and that’s a big controversy . . ."
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“Here, I believe that work—doing work and improving
one’s state of mind—is the primary therapy, and
that’s a big controversy because it is not going to
address really deep-seated issues. We all work together to
run this farm. It’s pretty special, but there is very
little traditional therapy.”
Part of that, she says, stems from what’s at the core
of Gould Farm—all-inclusive community. “In traditional
therapy, you don’t know the therapist. Here, you know
your therapist, you know where they live, and you probably
just had dinner with their kids.
“You can’t get as deep because there are too
many lines crossed here. It has its positives, but it does
inhibit the traditional side of psychotherapy.”
Another less traditional component of treatment at Gould
Farm—which involves five clinical caseworkers and weekly
visits from a contracted psychiatrist—is intense participation
by family and core community members. “My family knows
the whole farm team, Reid says. “And my team leader
has been involved in a lot of my therapy sessions.”
Gould Farm has been through many changes since Will and Agnes
first arrived here in 1913, but the belief that each person
has something valuable to contribute to the community regardless
of mental or emotional limitations remains a cornerstone philosophy.
Today, says outgoing clinical director John, modern developments
such as advanced psychotropic drugs offer individuals with
even the most severe biologically-based psychiatric disorders
a chance to participate in society that just wasn’t
an option 20 years ago, much less in the Goulds’ day.
And, John says, the community atmosphere of Gould Farm offers
them a safe place to practice those skills.
“I often tell people, ‘You’re going to
have a therapist here, but that might not be your most therapeutic
relationship. That might be Wayne on the Farm Team, or Emily
in the kitchen, or my dog or my kid. And that’s okay.
But you’re going to have a therapist and a program to
keep you on schedule.’”
Nine years ago, says John, the farm shifted its policy from
placing no time limits on how long guests could stay to setting
a maximum of three years (the Gould Farm program also has
group housing in place in more urban settings in order, in
part, to help facilitate gradual transition back into the
mainstream). “What we do well here is develop skills
that help people to be more independent and help people transition…so
that they use this more as a stepping stone.”
While many guests write back to say “thank you”—the
community’s old newsletters are filled with these heartfelt
messages—some come back to share their gratitude in
the form of service. “If you’ve been out a year
and you’re out of treatment and living independently,
you can apply to come work here,” John says, acknowledging
as he says this that the timeframe between treatment and employment
might be a little on the short side.
The volunteers from AmeriCorps and various youth groups from
around the country come to Gould Farm to serve, John says;
they go back into the world with a deeper understanding of
mental illness, serving as emissaries to help wipe out the
unfair and inaccurate stigma of the disease that affects so
many. (According to the National Institute of Mental Health,
about one in five Americans over the age of 18 suffers from
a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year.)
Work it on out
As in any community--or any family for that matter--contradiction
and conflict are also part of the daily routine.
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While
the stated purpose of the Harvest Barn was to
expand Gould Farm’s commercial enterprises
in order to generate revenues
. . . and to provide for more public outreach,
many of the guests . . . feel that too much
focus on enterprise will take away from the
farm’s core mission.
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Wayne, director of agricultural operations, shows me a central
boiler furnace that pumps hot water into both the farm ops
building—where heat is crudely dispatched through car
radiators hung from the ceiling—and into radiant tubing
encased in the floors of the new state-of-the-art, 4,000-square-foot
timber-framed Harvest Barn constructed with funds from a recent
$750,000 capital campaign. Both the contrast in destinations
(gum-and-clothespins old versus high-tech new) and the image
of water at a boiling point serve as apt metaphors for a conflict
that’s about to erupt at the weekly community meeting.
While the stated purpose of the Harvest Barn was to expand
Gould Farm’s commercial enterprises in order to generate
revenues—a licensed commercial kitchen for preparing
value-added products and a new marketing office are both housed
there—and to provide for more public outreach as well
as realistic vocational training for guests, many of those
guests (and, it’s implied, some of the workers and volunteers)
feel that too much focus on enterprise will take away from
the farm’s core mission and, worse yet, perhaps hinder
access to the program for those who cannot afford it.
“We realize that Gould Farm is moving toward more commerce,”
says Reid, reciting a laundry list of capital projects that
require funding, including new staff housing and a residential
building in Boston. “I assume most of the money comes
from us and from donations,” she tells the gathered
circle. “There are a lot of people here on a sliding
scale and through donations. If there was less of that, it
would be a shame. Gould Farm is a community that helps people
and takes them in.”
Executive director Cate—whose been burning the candle
at both ends to close the deal on the new building in Boston
since my arrival —suggests a day-long forum “around
the whole financial piece” in order to facilitate transparency.
“As a community, we need to define our priorities,”
she says.
Other suggestions include full financial disclosure at community
meetings and having a guest attend board meetings. “How
can you make decisions without input from the guests?”
a guest named Nick asks.
Cate explains the level of guest involvement in the Boston
project, where the abrupt sale of a property that had been
rented for next to nothing for 27 years necessitated the search
for a new home. The message from guests there was loud and
clear, she said: “Don’t abandon us.”
“We are all participants at any given time, but we’re
not owners,” offers Donna, who came to work at Gould
Farm with husband Wayne in 1984 and who lost a son to the
ravages of mental illness. “I have a role. Part of it
comes from the idealism of a pure democracy…and the
other comes from gathering our best ideas and trying to live
them as perfectly as possible in an imperfect world.
"…What our goal has to be is to not have roles
define our value. We have to affirm that.”
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In the old days,
someone reveals, Roma would sometimes bottle
maple syrup until 1 a.m., then get up at 6
a.m. to help put breakfast on the table.
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Roma is ancient. During my second breakfast in the dining
hall, I notice her tapping her foot to the morning music and
thoroughly enjoying herself (on my first morning she marched
right up to me and asked pointedly who I was and what I was
doing here). She came here as a guest, Cate tells me, during
the Great Depression.
I think about how elders are so often put out to pasture
in our society—probably way too kind a euphemism—and
how here at Gould Farm, Roma is dearly valued and treated
with love and respect, even reverence. In turn, she continues
to give back.
In the old days, someone reveals, Roma would sometimes bottle
maple syrup until 1 a.m., then get up at 6 a.m. to help put
breakfast on the table. Now, her main task is to assign seating
for each evening meal. She does this by placing individually
crafted napkin holders marked with guests’ names onto
the big square tables that fill up the hall. Roma takes her
job seriously, considering each choice carefully, sometimes
changing her mind in the process.
I want them to be happy,” she says earnestly as she
goes about her task. “I want them to be comfortable.”
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