A farmer finds a way

Kenny Young broke his back while snowmobile racing at age 19, but that hasn’t stopped the 28-year-old fifth-generation Vermont farmer from following his heart’s desire: farming.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140821/NEWS02/708219879

Partially paralyzed by a snowmobile accident nine years ago, Kenny Young of Milky Way Farm in Springfield demonstrates how he uses a modified utility cherry-picker, above, to help him get on his tractor. Below, Young talks to other disabled farmers Wednesday at his home. Photo: Photos by Len EmeryPublished August 21, 2014 in the Rutland Herald A Farmer Finds A Way Broken back doesn’t stop this Vt. farmer By SUSAN SMALLHEER Staff Writer SPRINGFIELD — Kenny Young broke his back while snowmobile racing at age 19, but that hasn’t stopped the 28-year-old fifth-generation Vermont farmer from following his heart’s desire: farming. Young and his wife, Kelli, hosted dozens of disabled and handicapped farmers and those who work with them at their Springfield home Wednesday, showing them how he continues to live and farm with adaptive machinery, hard work and ingenuity. Young no longer milks cows, but he still drives a tractor for hours each day, planting and harvesting hundreds of acres of corn and grass silage, and baling more than 17,000 square bales of hay in a season. He also helps raise replacement heifers for other dairy farmers and repairs farm machinery. “I can still farm,” Young said. “I’m a farmer, and I don’t just sit around.” Young is crop manager on the family farm, Young’s Milky Way Farm on Connecticut River Road. The farm straddles the Springfield-Weathersfield line and has a prime location on the river. The special farmers’ field day or “AgrAbility Fair” was sponsored by the Vermont Center for Independent Living, and it centered on farmers and their special needs and challenges. Thomas Younkman, the AgrAbility specialist for the Vermont Center for Independent Living, said his organization receives calls from 50 farmers in a year, asking for help in coping with their disabilities and their desire to keep farming. The group helps farmers deal with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, amputation and, in Young’s case, paralysis. “The mission is to keep Vermont farmers farming,” Younkman said. Part of the program is driven by demographics: Farmers are getting older, with the average age 57. For Young, AgrAbility helped him with funding for converting an old phone company utility truck into a hand-controlled lift that deposits Young into the driver’s seat of his big International tractor. He once depended on his mother Janice for help getting onto the tractor, which is run by hand controls, but the lift makes him more independent. Younkman said Young is part of the organization’s “barn-raising” group, which goes and visits other disabled farmers. Kenny Young has become good friends with another young disabled farmer, Sam Smyth, 24, of Enfield, Conn. He, too, was paralyzed from the waist down, but his injury came on the farm when he was crushed by a large round bale. “I’m a T-12,” he said, “same as Kenny.” T-12 refers to the location of the cervical injury that left both of them paralyzed. Smyth and his brother milk 30 cows, and bottle the milk themselves. He no longer can milk cows, but has adapted to what he can and cannot do. He eyes a $15,000 “action track” chair, that allows paraplegics to stand up, as well as go where wheelchairs can’t. Another farmer, Sean Hayes of Elmore, who runs the nonprofit Jupiter Farm, says the special track chairs would help the children with disabilities help on the vegetable farm. Younkman, himself a Hyde Park farmer with disabilities, said Vermont AgrAbility is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and is possible because Vermont has a land-grant college: the University of Vermont. Surrounding states such as New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York do not have similar programs because they do not have land-grant colleges, which date back to the 1860s. Young’s 2008 log house is a model of handicapped adaptability and accessibility: there are ramps from the garage and workshop into the house; there are wide doorways, a fully accessible bathroom, lowered kitchen counters, sink and stove and dishwasher. There’s even a small elevator. Young said his home site was always one of his favorites on the farm, and he would often come there with friends to hang out. “We used to hay here,” he said, pointing to his extensive lawn and garden. Young met his wife Kelli after his accident; they were introduced by a mutual friend. They’ve been married 2½ years, and Kelli, who grew up in Maine and worked on a vegetable farm in the summer, has left teaching to work side by side with her husband on the farm. She runs the farm’s website and drives tractors and trucks. Her husband “has such a good attitude,” Kelli Young said. “He says, ‘I can still farm.’ He’s learned so much patience.” Communication in the fields is done via cell phone, she said. Not everything in Kenny Young’s life is farm work. He loves to downhill ski and he gave a demonstration of his special mono or sitz-ski. If anything, he says, he can go faster on the slopes than he used to. “We’re so blessed,” he said. “We can still get out on the top of a mountain.” The event Wednesday included farmers who no longer can walk unassisted, farmers who are coping with the effects of brain tumors, farmers who work with disabled children and farmers in wheelchairs. The one thing they had in common was a desire to farm. Kenny Young (there are generations of Kenneth Youngs who farmed the river bottom land near Weathersfield Bow, all with different middle initials) could be Exhibit A in a display of determination and good humor. Young has always been like that, said his sister Julie Young, herself a Springfield dairy farmer. “He’s very strong,” she said, watching her brother hoist himself into the seat of the big International tractor to applause from the crowd. Young wasn’t the only young farmer Wednesday coping with disability. Ted Foster, 35, of Walden is recovering from a traumatic brain injury, a result from surgery to remove an egg-shaped tumor from his brain this March. His short-term memory is gone but expected eventually to return. Foster works for the Leggis Brothers Farm in East Hardwick, part of a crew that takes care of the 500 milking Jerseys. Foster has worked for the Leggis farm since he was young enough to mow a lawn. Foster said he had little warning about his brain tumor except for a debilitating headache. An MRI showed the tumor and he had surgery the next day at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. “The best news I’ve had through all of this was it wasn’t cancer,” said the father of two children. “‘Benign, be good.’” Waiting to be cleared to return to work has been a tremendous strain, Foster said. As a farmer, he likes to be doing something. Foster said that he has learned new ways to do old things — including making pancakes for his two daughters. Instead of pulling the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt off the shelf, one by one, he has learned to line up all his ingredients, and put them back as he uses them. Younkman said Foster is now physically able to return to farming, but sometimes can’t remember things minute to minute. He said that the organization will get Foster an iPhone with a calendar function to help him keep track of the things he needs to do. And a traumatic brain injury support group helps him a lot. “I know what to do,” Foster said, “and I know how to do it.” He added, “The doctors tell me my brain is like a road that was washed out.” His brain has to find a new path around the damaged area, he said. The Leggis Brothers are holding his job for him, he said. Farming is his life, Foster said, a belief shared by many Wednesday. “I can still farm,” Young said. “I’m a farmer and I don’t just sit around.”