Peaches Cunningham is co-founder with her husband, David, and Suzanne Alan Zimmerman of the Farmers House, which can be found at thefarmershouse.org and on Facebook. The working farm, produce stand and event space in the former Vaughn’s Orchard in Weston employs kids with autism and other disabilities. The Farmers House is hosting a corn festival Aug. 24. This conversation took place on a walking tour of the property.
Our farmers — we call the kids farmers — plant seeds in our greenhouse and transplant them into the raised beds and water them and weed them and harvest them, and some of them ring it up on the cash register. So they get the satisfaction of seeing something through from beginning to end, and they get the full experience of having a job. There is also a time clock where they clock in and clock out. Those kinds of skills are important to being able to get a job.
This is some fine-looking produce in the refrigerator case. What do you have today?
These are some peppers and radishes we grew, and some corn and cucumbers and Missouri peaches that we get from nearby growers.
The produce case is inside this nice country store. What do you call it?
This is the Market, and the Market keeps all three of our programs going financially: the market, the garden and our baking.
How would you describe the Market?
This is just a fun store with a lot of Missouri-based food products — every kind of jam and syrup and candy you can imagine. There are lots of gifty items as well. The splatterware is popular.
And because this is apple country and Vaughn’s was an apple orchard, come fall we will have every kind of apple and pumpkin things.
And all year long we have frozen apple dumplings that people love that you can take home and bake.
On the weekend we serve barbeque — pulled pork and ribs and cole slaw with roasted apples. The second Saturday of the month we do fried chicken.
And we have apple fritters because everyone loved them so much at Vaughn’s and told us we had to bring them back, and so we did.
What kinds of jobs do the kids do in the Market?
They meet the trucks coming in and check items off the order list. They price all the items. They learn how to use a pricing gun in the back storage area. Then they come out to the retail space and stock. So those are useful skills they can take to another job and have meaningful work.
Here in the upstairs loft we made this event space that book clubs use and families use for parties, and the kids help set up the room and serve the food and do the clean-up.
You have an autistic son.
I do. His name is John David. He comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He comes and works with Natalie, one of the job coaches, and yesterday for one solid hour he tied ribbons around pies and stocked them in the freezer. Anyone who has a child like John David knows an hour is a very long time.
The other thing he loves to do is bag up our little berry baskets filled with gummy candies.
How did your experience with John David cause you to start a program like this?
When you have a child like ours, your biggest worry from the very beginning is: What are they going to do? Where are they going to live? Who is going to take care of them when we are gone? Even when they are 3 years old, it weighs on you constantly.
So John David loves the outdoors and loves to be on the move, so whenever David and I thought about what we wanted to do with John David, we always came up here to Weston. We always went out to the Red Barn, and we started thinking about a place where he could live.
Do people live here?
Not now. But that is something we are looking at in the long range.
What misconceptions do people have about autism?
People are afraid to hire people like John David, but they are the best employees you can have. They are conscientious and reliable and grateful to have the job.
What do people who don’t have kids with autism not understand about it?
It has gotten so much better. The kids are now integrated into classrooms, and the younger generation doesn’t think anything about it.
John David has friends who are not autistic, and they don’t think anything of it. It’s a huge change.
I think this generation is going to be the one that really hires these kids and allows them to live a normal life.
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