Digging Deep
Six baby goats shelter beneath a piece of scrap metal that’s a slightly darker shade of gray than the sky, from which a cold drizzle falls. The rain doesn’t seem to bother Tony, a 2,000-pound bull resting in the dirt nearby, but there’s no sign of Harvest Farm’s resident turkeys, pigs, or donkeys. The landscape is flat in Wellington, an agricultural town about 12 miles northeast of Fort Collins, and the horizon is lost in the low clouds on this mid-April day. The 100-acre farm typically would be abuzz with human residents preparing for planting season. Instead, everyone has taken refuge inside.
In the chow hall, small groups of men sit at long tables and chat over burgers. They converse about work and life and all the other things co-workers typically talk about. Yet, these men aren’t conventional colleagues. They work at Harvest Farm, yes, but not to earn a living. They’re here for a new start. Harvest Farm is a recovery program run by Denver Rescue Mission (DRM) that helps men, up to 72 at any given time, struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and homelessness achieve sobriety, self-sufficiency, stable employment, and housing.
DRM—a nonprofit that works with individuals experiencing homelessness in the Denver metro area—founded Harvest Farm in 1988. The
