Army Veteran Lawrence Rhone first found a way to aid his fellow Veterans with Rhone’s Farm and Retreat in northeast Montana as a place for them to rediscover their purpose after service.
This fall he helps launch a program to give Veterans and service members the skills to begin in farming and ranching as well as having behavioral health support.
The Holistic Impactful Veteran Engagement (H.I.V.E.) program, a 12-day course that begins in late September to early October in Plentywood, Montana, is the first of three 15-member cohorts to be offered. Future seminars will be in spring 2025 in Missoula, Montana, and fall 2025 in Bozeman, Montana.
“Across the state there’s an opportunity for Veterans to participate, as well as service members,” he said.
All expenses for the course are funded through the Farmer Veteran Coalition and the USDA NRCS National Equity Outreach Grant.
Rhone, who served during the Cold War and Gulf War eras, purchased his farm in 2013 and quickly saw a way to help fellow Veterans find peace and a new mission there.
“The Veteran’s transition from service never ends,” Rhone said. “People think you exit service and you get acclimated to that life and that’s it. That isn’t it.”
Military Veterans, he said, often struggle with a loss or a degree of a sense of loss in three main areas: self-worth, purpose and community. A fourth obstacle can be a sense of shame from their service duties.
“It’s often overlooked and not talked about,” he said. “Moral, ethical, even survivor’s shame. … There are things you can’t unsee, can’t undo, and you live with that the rest of your life.”
Another challenge can be dealing with diminished mobility and physical dexterity from age.
“You ask, ‘What do I do next? What is going to be my sense of purpose?’
“The Veteran has a mission-oriented mindset and farming and ranching are a fit. You can seek out ways to address your diminished capacity, ways to use your tactical prowess to navigate challenging tasks in a farm or ranch setting. And then you get the chance to care about something, to contribute, to grow something, to nurture something – cows, sheep, a crop, in our case, trees.”
Terry Cosby, undersecretary of the USDA got word of the success of Rhone’s Farm and Retreat and came to check it out himself in August 2022.
There, the undersecretary learned firsthand from Rhone about the program. He requested a ride with Rhone into town and in the car told Rhone, “I wanted to tell you I really appreciate what you’ve done here … so what do you need?”
The question caught Rhone off-guard.
“What do you need to replicate this?” Cosby asked Rhone. “We haven’t seen programs that are this holistic, that include the behavioral health, the farming, the ranching, the boots on the ground activity as well as the classroom.”
Rhone was told funding was available and he was asked to develop a program.
He quickly called Jeanette Lombardo, Executive Director of Farmer Veteran Coalition, to get the effort started through the nonprofit.
“Without the mentorship and support I get of those I engage with I wouldn’t be able to do this,” he said.
The seminar is setting aside five of the 15 spots per cohort for Native farmers, who have been oppressed for a long time, Rhone said. He is working with the Great Plains Veteran Service Center will help find Native Veterans for those five spots.
Rhone is an alumnus of the Armed to Farm program, which is by the National Center for Appropriate Technology. It helped him get started on his farm.
“I wouldn’t know the things I know, the people I know, and the things to navigate unless I had gone to that program. And that wouldn’t have happened without NRCS, which encouraged me to go to their seminar as I tried to figure out farming and ranching.”
Getting a new group of farmers and ranchers after military service is the focus of the program.
“They will learn what it takes to start a farm from scratch, from the tools, the networking, and the tool of support and resiliency in doing it,” he said. “When they leave our seminar, we want them to be microloan-ready. The microloan is a loan of up to $50,000 that are provided to beginning farmers.”
Both military and farming life can be volatile, Rhone said, so the first four days of the seminar the focus is on behavioral health, which helps them to develop that tool, he said. Rhone is certified in WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan), which will be taught as part of the course.
“We’re giving them farm tools (upon graduation) and a behavioral health tool that is similar to a crescent wrench … adjustable for all sizes of challenge.”
He also wants to give those Veterans the motivation and inspiration to serve through an ongoing community project that will be part of the program.
“It’s in our DNA to continue to serve,” he said. “This is something that will have a lasting impact and they can get behind and support way after this experience is over for them.”
To learn more, listen to Recovery Talks’ podcast episode with Rhone where he talks more about the project and how it strives to help veterans access agricultural resources. You can listen here: https://on.soundcloud.com/5CYq2MPw4Du39GMCA
For those interested, you can access the application here:
