Farming helps veterans ease back into civilian life

In a plaid shirt and jeans, dusty boots and a billed cap, Matt Mccue surveyed a row of chili pepper plants in the commercial garden he manages on a hillside west of Sebastopol.

Mccue, 26, plucked a red, wrinkled chili from one stalk. “It’s sunburned,” he said, taking a large bite.

“Whew,” Mccue said. “That’s got some flavor.”

The tranquil, verdant setting at 25-acre French Garden Farm is as far removed as can be — physically and psychologically — from the Iraqi desert, where Mccue served as a sergeant with the Army’s 4th Infantry Division in 2003-04.

Outdoor work and the challenge of growing food suits Mccue, one of several dozen war veterans engaged in farming and allied with a 16-month-old group called the Farmer-Veteran Coalition.

“We think it’s a significant concept,” said Michael O’Gorman, production manager of the 1,600-acre Del Cabo organic farm operation in Baja, Mexico, and adviser to the coalition. “It’s just getting started.”

War vets need a place to decompress from the stresses of combat and the demands of military discipline, said Sufyan Bunch, the coalition’s veteran outreach coordinator who served with McCue at Fort Hood but did not go overseas.

“You can dress how you want, drive a tractor, grow a beard,” Bunch said. Farm work is “a perfect fit,” he said, for a veteran who might feel uncomfortable in an office cubicle.

The coalition grew from a meeting between a group of farmers and three Gold Star mothers who lost their sons in combat. They gathered at Swanton Berry Farm overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Davenport, north of Santa Cruz, in May, 2007.

One of the mothers was Nadia McCaffrey of Tracy, whose son, Army Sgt. Patrick McCaffrey, was killed in Iraq while serving with a Petaluma-based National Guard unit in 2004.

The idea, said O’Gorman, is that farms can provide both employment and healing for war veterans. And it cuts both ways, he said, because American agriculture — with five times as many farmers over age 65 as under 35 — needs young blood.

New farmers are needed not only to invigorate the industry, but also to propel the “green farming” movement toward more wholesome, fresh, locally grown foods, O’Gorman said last week on a visit to French Garden Farm.

Sonoma County, he said, is a “ground zero” for the movement.

About half of French Garden Farm’s produce goes to the nearby French Garden Restaurant, where the menu is tailored to the seasonal harvest, said Dan Smith, a high-tech entrepreneur who owns the farm and upscale eatery.

Most of the rest is sold at farmers’ markets, and if there is still more bounty, it goes to local food pantries, Smith said.

Mccue, who started work as the farm’s foreman in December, said he feels at home among the long green rows of some 20 different crops. “I have a relationship with these plants,” he said.

Many people join the military for the challenge, and Mccue said farming is every bit as big a challenge — with no one around to pick up your slack. He said he feels as if he’s been promoted from private to general, responsible for both daily decisions and the ultimate outcomes.

“You have to go all or nothing into farming,” he said.

Mccue, who grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., left the Army in early 2005 and subsequently served with the Peace Corps in Niger, an impoverished west African nation, raising millet and sesame with farmers who do all their work by hand.

On the hillside west county, Mccue operates a tractor, trucks and drip irrigation lines. A spacious barn serves as the farm’s packing and storage area.

“I’m very lucky,” Mccue said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.