‘A feeling of community’: Vets on the Farm cultivates mentors to grow in civilian life

When Army veteran Duane Zbranek left the military and returned home after two tours in Iraq serving as a medic, he felt disconnected.

“I was not really feeling the civilian world, not understanding a lot of it. I kept it to myself,” Zbranek said. “Then, I got outside and started doing a whole bunch of landscaping, and I really loved it. I noticed I was calm outside and not angry.”

He decided to turn that experience into something more by going to school.

Zbranek went through Spokane Community College’s greenhouse management program, and then found Vets on the Farm, a Spokane Conservation District program started nearly 10 years ago.

The program has veterans learning from mentors who are also former military members at its Red Poppy Farm just south of Spokane. They can volunteer, do a one-year paid internship or receive a summer’s monthly stipend if funding is available.

About 30 veterans have done apprenticeships since the program started, farm manager Grant Weber said. Others simply volunteered to be around other veterans. Roughly 15 graduates have started small farms. Others went into related work or used practices at home to grow healthy foods. A few decided it wasn’t for them, he said.

Eight years ago, Zbranek first volunteered for Vets on the Farm – and never left. He did an internship and became greenhouse manager. Recently, Zbranek started a farm business, Ramblin’ Roots, but he plans to continue his work at Vets on the Farm.

“Out here, you’re actually making something,” Zbranek said. “You’re taking a seed, turning it into life and taking that life and selling it to customers. That whole process is just fantastic when you’ve grown the food, and someone comes back and raves about it.”

Veterans learn it all – how to grow from seeds to planting, maintaining, harvesting, marketing and selling produce twice weekly at an onsite farm stand from May to October.

Their model is to grow organic produce, using the state’s Good Agricultural Practices certification. Leaders recently added beekeeping, shown in studies to be therapeutic. The group also sells produce to Billie’s Diner, a “farmer-first” restaurant in Airway Heights, and to CasaCano Farms in Valleyford.

Weber credits the idea to Vicki Carter, conservation district director, who saw a need for post 9-11 veterans leaving the military to get training in agriculture or ranching while also transitioning to civilian lives. Meanwhile, the average age of farmers is 60 and getting older, Weber said.

“She put the two together and came up with this idea and started researching it,” Weber said.

At meetings with landowners, farmers and ranchers, Carter kept bringing up the idea. It reached owners at the nearby Emtman Brothers Farms, and they offered a no-cost lease of 3 acres for the program’s farm, Weber said.

“In almost 10 years, it’s not been just post 9-11 vets going through,” Weber said. “It’s been any vet, and we’ve had Vietnam-era vets all the way to guys just getting out of the Air Force at Fairchild.”

Weber said farming and the military are similar “because both careers are very mission-driven.”

“There are certain times of the year you have to do certain things, no matter what the weather is or how you feel. It’s kind of a natural transition.”

But it goes beyond that, too.

“There is also the healing aspect of it, to get your hands in the soil, going from destruction to production. And a lot of veterans are just looking to be around other veterans.”

Weber also joined the program eight years ago. Raised on a Ritzville wheat farm, he learned the trade where his grandfather had homesteaded. He then entered the Air Force. The family land eventually was sold.

Retiring from the military after 21 years, he and his wife, Ginny – also a veteran – returned to Ritzville, where he worked at area farms. He heard Carter talk in Ritzville about Vets on the Farm and started volunteering. Today, the couple lives in Spokane, both working in the program.

The couple and Zbranek have learned that while working side by side in the soil, newcomers often open up.

“We get people say, ‘I can’t believe I’ve been talking the whole time,’ ” Grant Weber said. “When vets are around other vets, there are a lot of things you don’t have to explain, so you can just talk.”

They also have the freedom to make mistakes in growing produce, Ginny Weber said.

“This is an education farm, so we are able to try all sorts of different vegetables and varieties,” she said. “Time is the big thing people don’t consider, and how long it takes things to grow before we harvest. You need a plan.”

Veterans Conservation Corps, under the state Department of Veteran Affairs, backs the one-year internships. Zbranek said it also offered him other classes, including one to understand traumatic brain injury. He plugged into a network of veterans and farmers.

“I had the support; anytime I was coming down, someone was there,” Zbranek said.

Vets on the Farm also does outreach for veterans with monthly meetings held at the district’s office. It has smaller, informal lunches at the farm in winter months.

Separately, it runs Call to Farms to offer help if a veteran farmer or a program participant experiences a hardship. In June, a garlic farmer near Chewelah, Washington, had fallen behind in operations, while dealing with the death of his wife from breast cancer, Grant Weber said. The program put out a call, and volunteers pulled up garlic on 1 acre.

Navy veteran Susan Laboy began with Vets on the Farm in 2020 and found healing. She runs La B Farms, an Otis Orchards small venture that sells eggs, veggies and honey, mainly to neighbors.

Laboy’s husband is a retired Marine. After they moved here in 2000, they found the transition difficult, she said. The couple raised two children.

In more recent years, she dealt with post-traumatic stress syndrome – not from her military time, but from caretaking high-level, special needs foster kids. They adopted a son, who was having difficulties when she started with Vets on the Farm. It helped them both.

“I brought him a lot, and he did better,” Laboy said. “We were outside. It was therapeutic just being in the soil, learning about it, seeing how things grow and how we need it, how much nutrients are in our food. It really hit a chord.

“I decided I was going to incorporate it into my life. My husband and I find importance in serving our community. A lot of times, it can be not healthy just giving a lot and not finding ways to put back into yourself.”

The experience helped her in another way.

“Before, no one would know I’d served; I never talked about it,” said Laboy, who also volunteered with the Spokane Cowgirls and Women Warriors.

“My friend from Cowgirls said to me, ‘You did serve; you shouldn’t devalue that.’ Women often fall into the role of wife, mother, caregiver; it’s not seen as valued as the way men continue to carry it. Now I say, ‘I’m a veteran.’ ”

Vietnam-era veteran Carlos Delsid also found connection, along with a new occupation.

Delsid worked as an airplane mechanic, after the Army, Air Force Reserves and Army National Guard. In retiring, he wanted to learn from Vets on the Farm. He now has a Colbert small business – Peaceful Lane Farm – selling produce at farmers markets. His wife, Susan, sells flowers.

“I started it for fun, to be around other veterans and to see what organic farming was all about,” Delsid said. “Then, I heard about an internship program.

“It was so much fun and rewarding to be with that group of people. They’re like family now. I got a feeling of community and belonging to something.”