Ginny & Grant Weber on Farmer Voices
Farmers: Ginny & Grant Weber
Organization: Vets on the Farm
Location: Spokane, WA
Grant
My name is Grant Weber. I’m the Farm Manager here at Vets on the Farm. This will be my ninth growing season up here I believe. I kind of lost track of time a little bit.
I was in the United States Air Force, the greatest Air Force in the world, for 21 years. I did six deployments to the Middle East, so Iraq, Afghanistan, all those nice places over there.
I grew up in the boone metropolis of Ritzville, Washington, just off I-90. So if you’ve been there, you’ve probably gotten a ticket from one of our fine police officers, or you stopped to get coffee, which you can’t at Starbucks anymore because they just closed it. I grew up on a wheat farm, and my great-grandpa was the one who settled it, and then my grandpa and my dad, we all worked and then worked for other farmers.
So there was always a big garden, always, you know, animals and stuff. So I did the whole 4H FFA thing growing up. Then I joined the Air Force and when I retired, we moved back to Ritzville. I just kind of fell into Vets on the Farm. Vicki Carter, our Director of the Spokane Conservation District, had just started this program and I went to a presentation and started volunteering.
Part-time and now more than full-time up here at the farm. We moved to Spokane so we could be closer. And this program is something we really believe in.
Ginny
My name’s Ginny Weber. My story’s not as glamorous as Grant. So I served nine years in the Air Force. Funny thing, Grant and I actually met in Japan. We were both stationed there in the dorms and in May we celebrated our 30th anniversary, if you can believe that.
I am the Assistant Manager at Vets on the Farm. I’ve been here just over three years. My background: after the Air Force, I got out, went to college, got a couple bachelor’s degrees, worked for the government. And then when we moved to Ritzville, I didn’t want to have to do the hour-long commute, so I got into commercial insurance and bonds.
And during COVID, Grant had mentioned we were living in Ritzville, and I’m quite an extrovert, but I really started becoming an introvert, so I quit. And Grant said, “come up to the farm and volunteer while you figure out what you’re doing.” And well, I guess I figured out what I’m doing, ’cause here I am.
Grant
Yeah, so we’re a nonprofit, and our goal is to get veterans into farming, any kind of agriculture, forestry, ranching.
So if we don’t do it here on our small chunk of land, we have partners that we can refer ’em to or help ’em along. But it’s all about transitioning back into the civilian world and finding something that is meaningful to them.
We operate on three acres. It’s an organic vegetable farm. We have about 20 different kinds of vegetables, give or take, that we grow. So we have the hoop house, the greenhouse, and then we have like five plots that we grow in kind of the same method as like Jean-Martin Fortier or Ben Hartman, Elliot Coleman, you know, we model it after them.
It’s a learning farm, so that’s why we grow so many different kinds of vegetables. ‘Cause we’re going to show the different families and varieties of vegetables.
It’s kind of a cradle to grave operation. So everything that we grow here, we start ourselves either, you know, by seed, transplanting, harvesting. We have a wash station on site and we also have cold storage, and then we have a farm stand and we teach marketing as best we can, selling to restaurants and other small farms and stuff like that.
And then we also have a program here called Call to Farms. So if a veteran or one of our local community members needs help, we just throw bodies at it. And we think it’s important to veterans to integrate back into the civilian world that way by doing community service. And then also civilians seeing that, you know, interacting with veterans and listening to the stories and stuff.
So we don’t provide therapy at the farm, but it is therapeutic, is what we say. We have a good relationship with the VA hospital here. So we help veterans down that road too.
I think the biggest misconception of farming is that you put the seed in the ground, it pops up and it grows, and then you sell it for this amazing price. It’s, you know, it’s very romantic. They think it’s easy. They don’t understand the hours. I have some friends that took over their family farm and he said, “it’s not what we do, it’s who we are, and it’s a way of life. It’s not a job.”
You can always find farmers in a big group ’cause they’re in a smaller group talking, like they find each other, and it’s a lot like veterans too.
That’s why the transition for a lot of veterans is somewhat natural ,because farming and being in the military are very similar. There’s certain times of the year you have to do certain things, no matter the weather, how you’re feeling, like, you have to do these things.
Ginny
From our interns that we’ve had over the last couple years, they have realized the importance of soil health. And you have to start there. You don’t have to understand the complete intricacies of soil, but you do need to understand what your plants need, when we seed them, and then when we transplant them.
People think you just take the seed and you just put it in the soil, and it just goes. Now there’s about 50,000 other things that need to get done around that to get ready for tomorrow because we’re regenerative.
So if we take something out today, either something new is going to go in this afternoon, or it’s going to go in tomorrow. So just understanding that when you’re out there, you have to take all those things into consideration in order to teach. We’re teaching, learning farm.
I always tell interns when they come in, yes, we’re a teaching farm, but we’re also a learning farm ,because you’re new and you are, hopefully, excited about this, and you’re watching those webinars and going to those classes and you have all these great ideas… share them! Don’t assume that we know everything, because we just don’t.
Grant
Our biggest challenge is manpower a lot of times. And since we’re a learning farm and we have interns coming and going, we don’t always know when we’re going to get ’em. Most of our interns are part-time, so two to three days a week, ’cause they have other jobs they have to do. So that’s our biggest challenge.
When we get new interns or see the level of interest in our program when veterans are getting out, that’s always inspiring to see.
Ginny
It’s not just the interns that we impact, but the community at large.
Grant
We get asked like, how can you support us? The biggest thing that we ask is come and buy our stuff. ‘Cause we have veterans working in the stand so they see that interaction and how excited people are to do that.
And just to let people know that veterans don’t necessarily want a hand out, they want to hand up. And we need more organizations like this. ‘Cause we’ve had a few stories, people coming and they said they were close, but, this made them wake up and see that there is more out there.
