At Farm in the Dell, our mission is transforming disabilities into abilities through purposeful work and life experiences in a community farm setting.
We don’t just grow produce. At our core, we serve people with developmental disabilities – adults, young and old, who live with Autism, Down’s Syndrome, etc. who were born with chronic conditions and were dealt a hand in life that no amount of money, hours in the field, or boxfuls of tomatoes will ever erase. With that said, we work hard everyday to support our employees through livable wages, prayer, friendship.

In our commitment to further the mission/impact at the farm, we are looking to further expand our employment opportunities. Currently, our space at the farm consists of tilled field and a pole barn (with no bathroom, no floor, no heat, no air condit), not allowing us to provide employment outside of the growing season, which is between May - Oct. It is with deep sadness that we have to say goodbye to our employees each fall, hoping/praying that they not only return the following spring, but, more importantly, that they find other means of employment/other places to belong/have purpose during the off-season.

Because we don’t have a usable structure on the farm to grow produce outside of the regular growing season, we don’t have a way to start seedlings in the spring, meaning that we have to either rent space from a local nursery or outsource the process. In turn, it forces us to stall the onboarding of our employees until we are ready to transplant our seedlings into the ground, and we lose out on them being a part of the initial planting process in early spring.

Starting this year, we are attempting to lengthen our employment season by renovating the old unusable greenhouse on our property, which was built/used before we moved onto the property. If we had a working greenhouse on-site, we start our own seedlings and do succession planting, allowing us to lengthen our employee season by one to two months.