At Full of Grace Farm in Hadley, a wide range of students from 7-year-olds to those attending college have learned about barn management, horses and the farm through collaborations with local schools that offer accredited classes and make a day at the farm part of the school curriculum.
Laura Litterer, co-owner of Full of Grace Farm, said the farm is looking to continue outreach to local schools beyond those its collaborated with in the past such as the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hopkins Academy in Hadley and Pioneer Valley Performing Arts (PVPA) Charter Public School in South Hadley.
“We can tailor programming to either be a part of or complement the current curriculum that teachers are teaching,” she said. “We’ve done it in the past utilizing the horse, whether it be history, science, ecology, environmental. Horses have basically walked us through generations in history, so there isn’t any realm that horses haven’t touched when it comes to humans.”
Full of Grace Farm has 15 horses, all of which are rescue animals and offer riding and horsemanship courses year-round, she said. The farm has also been keeping in line with state health precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We keep small numbers and we’re very mindful of the state mandates regarding COVID,” she said. “Our barn is a very open and airy structure and of course, the paddocks and the riding arena, that’s all outdoor stuff.”
When students connect their studies with the hands-on learning taking place at the farm, Litterer said, “they start seeing their school work differently.”
“We’re trying to figure out outreach to schools and teachers to let them know that we’re here as a resource and we are very adaptable to a wide range of things that they might need support with — and a way to detach from the whole Zoom fatigue problem and get them out into a social situation applying some of the things that they should be learning.”
Alison Whitney, an 18-year-old Hadley resident who was a volunteer at the farm for two years while she was attending PVPA, said she felt she was part of a community at the farm during her junior and senior years.
Whitney, now an undergraduate student at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, said her volunteer work and horse riding lessons went toward physical education requirements, which she needed to graduate high school.
“In addition to riding once a week, I also had a number of responsibilities like taking care of the horses, which is quite a bit of work and also cleaning up after yourself. I found that it was a really great way to learn how to be responsible, how to work as a team and how to be part of a larger community.”
Ann Roux, 59, of Chicopee, has been a barn volunteer at the farm for about 8½ years. She first learned about Full of Grace Farm via Facebook and was interested in working with horses, given that she’s had a lifelong love for the animal.
“I just think that it’s a great opportunity for people like me, who never had a chance to be around horses. You learn horse care from the ground up,” she said.
Kate Wilson, a 26-year-old veterinarian who volunteered at Full of Grace farm when she was an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst, said she grew up working with horses, but wasn’t able to be in the barn with animals during her first two years of college. She missed having horses in her life, so she volunteered in her junior year in 2015.
“I didn’t even care about riding, I just wanted to be around the horses,” Wilson said. “I got started with them working in the morning to get the barn prepped for the day.”
Wilson now works as a veterinarian in Lawrence and said the volunteer work at Full of Grace was a“confidence building experience” in gaining hands-on experiences working with all the horses at the farm and getting to know the animals personally.
Erin Sears, a preschool teacher with Sunderland Elementary School, has been a volunteer at Full of Grace Farm for the past seven years in programs such as women riding groups and youth groups.
“I think coming down to the farm, there’s so many different aspects of what we teach here that really correlates back to the classroom,” Sears said. “Between school and here, for our older kids, it relates back to every subject whether that’s math, science or history. They bring that back to what they learn here.”
For more information about Full of Grace Farm visit fullofgracefarm.com.
Chris Goudreau can be reached at cgoudreau@gazettenet.com.