WEST NEWFIELD, Maine — Tending to a garden can be therapeutic. But for the men in dungarees and T-shirts digging in the dirt one afternoon on a hill in western Maine, it’s more than a pastime; it’s a lifeline.
“I believe this place is helping to save my life,” said Robert Simpson, a 48-year-old alcoholic, who picked up a drink after being sober for 22 years. He ended up homeless, penniless and living in the woods. Getting a bed in this halfway house on 105 acres called Ray Angers Farm, “I’m realizing now how working with nature is a big part of my recovery.”
Cleaning the chicken coop, harvesting turnips and feeding the pigs don’t sound like traditional methods of treatment for those trying to kick opioids and alcohol. But the bucolic Ray Angers Farm is far from a traditional recovery center. As fields of buckwheat sway in the breeze and flocks of free-range chickens cluck a few yards away, a team of men are working on staying clean as they stop and smell the zinnias.
“It’s great meditation, being in the garden. You can get outside your head,” said Matthew Call, a 23-year-old from Waterboro whose addictive habits started at 13. Though he’s been in and out of recovery centers across New England, the tranquil setting and pastoral skills he’s acquiring could help him stay on the right path. “Before I came here I didn’t know about gardening and all this good stuff. I love hanging out with ducks and picking the flowers.”
Run by the York County Shelter Program, 40 men come here each year to nurture the seeds of sobriety. They aim to leave behind the ruins of lives ravaged by heroin, crack, alcohol and marijuana once and for all. While they practice the 12 steps and take it one day at a time, they learn to farm, cook and relate to something bigger than themselves.
“It’s a huge distraction from idleness,” said clinical director Jennifer Ouellette.
“In traditional treatment, they have breakfast, group, free time. There is an awful lot of free time. They may not be ready for gainful employment right now, but they have time. We need to help them make good, productive use of their time when they are not sitting and thinking.”
On the farm, resident’s days are programed from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Farming is on the schedule, but it’s not just a chore.
Collecting eggs for breakfast, harvesting greens and tomatoes for that night’s salad and taking care of livestock instills responsibility. By weeding row crops and tending animals they “rediscover things about themselves that they might have lost touch with when they were using drugs and alcohol,” said Mary Beth Ontkush, the program’s therapeutic farm manager. “It’s big and small transformations. A lot of it is letting them be who they are and discover who they are.”
Inch by inch, row by row, the garden they grow is themselves.
The recovery farm, which has been here for close to nine years, serves low-income men aged 18 to 70. They don’t need farm experience or money to enter the program. After six months some have gone on to pursue a life in agriculture, but the real goal is meaningful sobriety.
Referred by shelters, detox programs, Alcoholics Anonymous or probation officers, some residents are surprised that hope arising from despair can be found through agriculture.
“This is reconnecting me to a time when I actually enjoyed life,” said Duncan Blow, a 34-year-old who did jail time for burglaries to fuel his heroin addiction. “When I was running around with heroin on the streets of Biddeford, I would often think if I died that day it wouldn’t bother me.”
Now he wakes up in the morning and isn’t looking for his next fix. He’s thinking about the ducks. Do they need more shade on a hot summer day?
“Seems crazy to think that this is a rehab, to come out and work in a garden,” said Blow, a razor-thin man with spiky hair and missing teeth. “It’s been the best thing for me in a long time. I enjoy it every day. I don’t care if it’s raining or 120 degrees out, I’ll come out here and go to work. I love it.”
While putting the scattered pieces of their lives back, weeding a raspberry patch helps. “They don’t have to think about the past or the future,” said Ontkush. Just harvesting kale, feeding the pigs or keeping the ducks sheltered is vibrant reality right in front of them.
Inside a refurbished farmhouse, they have meals and participate in group sessions and AA meetings. But a transformative next step to recovery waits right outside on the fertile rolling acres.
“I feel like it’s saving my life every day,” said Blow. “When I come out here I gain that sense of connection to the land.”
The potency of the program is a perfect illustration of why they came here. A life can be rebuilt from ruins. Agriculture speaks to their ravaged nature without words. Through the seasons, the cycle of life unfolds before them.
“They start seeds under grow lights in February,” says Ouellette. “To see grown men gather around these little seedlings, witness their joy and excitement as they sprout and hearing them talk about the renewal of life, that things go on and start again. And they can start over, too.”
For men like Simpson, who lost his home in Kennebunk, his wife and identity when the bottle called, the country setting restores him. “I could’ve gone to treatment in the city, but it’s dangerous. Too many temptations,” he said. Working outside, or in the greenhouse, walking trails along the property, viewing the White Mountains on a good day, he feels he can make it.
“The most important thing for me is peace and quiet. I grew up in an alcoholic home, all I wanted was peace and quiet,” said Simpson, looking off into the distance. “The quality in my sobriety will come.”
