HENDERSONVILLE HEALING
In 2018, CCF researched non profit organizations working on the empowerment of veterans, women, and children in Alabama. Key terms searches returned results for charities across the Southeastern region of the United States. Among these that the Alabama-based CCF just couldn’t pass on working with is the Veterans Healing Farm.
Based in North Carolina, John and Nicole Mahshie purchased their land in 2007. After serving in the United States Air Force, John eventually came to realize that he wanted to create a place where fellow veterans could feel safe on home soil. He hoped that sharing his passion for gardening would create a community based on empathy instead of pity, respect instead of fear, and love instead of anger. Gardening was that activity that drew John back to a time before his military service and hoped it would be able to bring the tangible joy to his peers too.
A few years later, John and Nichole had the wheels turning and in 2014, the Veterans Healing Farm became a non profit organization. They serve veterans from all over the nation in all branches of the military. The VHF offers workshops on agriculture and tethers their community via support for emotional and physical healing. Each year they donate the farm's produce and bouquets of flowers to folks at their nearby Veterans Affairs locations.
This year, the Clayne Crawford Foundation's focus is the #RippleEffect. They encourage supporters to look inward and ask, "What can I do? How can I serve others around me? What actions will I take to inspire change? John and Nicole's story is a great example of the #RippleEffect. By sharing his passion of gardening, John was able to bring about real change in his community that the team at CCF is proud to support in hopes that its affect will be able to reach far beyond humble Hendersonville, North Carolina.
