Episode 20: Stephanie Deaken - Fiddlehead Care Farm in Ontario, Canada.
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Christa Hein: Hey there. Welcome to the Farm Educators Roadmap. I'm Christa Hein, former nonprofit girl turned farm education entrepreneur. I've spent the last 30 years creating hands-on programs that connect people to the land animals, and the traditions that nourish our daily lives.
If you're listening, you probably believe what I do, that farm education is needed now more than ever - not just on rural farms, but in suburbs, cities, and everywhere in-between.
In this podcast, you'll hear real stories and practical advice from farm educators all across the country, people who are creating change through their programs in creative and inspiring ways.
Whether you're dreaming about starting your first program, are already knee deep in your own farm education work, or are just curious about how others are impacting their communities through farm education, you're in the right place. [00:01:00] Let's dig in.
Welcome back to the Farm Educators Roadmap. I'm your host, Christa Hein, and today we're diving into a farm that brings together therapy, animals, and nature in a beautiful, intentional way. My guest is Stephanie Deaken, the founder and director of Fiddlehead Care Farm in Ontario, Canada.
Stephanie's background as a therapist and her deep connection to the natural world come together in this one-of-a-kind farm that supports children, youth, and families navigating autism, anxiety, depression, and other mental health and developmental challenges.
We'll talk about how her sister inspired her path, how a move to a dairy farm led to her life's work and what it looks like to run a farm where therapy and care are woven into every garden bed and animal interaction.
Stephanie, thanks so much for joining us.
Stephanie Deaken: Thanks for having me.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. Steph, I'd like to start at the [00:02:00] beginning. You've said that your passion for supporting people with special needs began early in life. Can you share a bit about your upbringing and how your sister's influence helped shape who you are today?
Stephanie Deaken: Sure, not a problem. My sister has Down syndrome so I grew up in the world of neurodiversity, from a young age working as a babysitter and taking care of kids with all different needs. I followed that path knowing that I wanted to work with kids of all different needs and worked in fields. I was a Deafblind Intervener at one time, just did some mediation for children and then found myself at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab, my children's hospital in Toronto. And that's where I met my co-founder, Breanne Mathers. So between the two of us, we both shared the love, for nature and animals and supporting these children and we thought, we kind of made up this idea of bringing children to nature and just seeing the healing process that farming and nature can have, [00:03:00] on children's lives.
I met my husband who was a dairy farmer, grew up in the world of teaching and farming, and together we found this beautiful property. And without him in the farming background, this may not have existed. But we like to say we're sort of therapist first, farmer second, and we brought this idea of supporting children's mental health to farmlands and using the power of animals and nature in our intervention processes.
So that's kind of how it got me here, to found Fiddlehead Care Farm almost 10 years. 10 years ago now.
Christa Hein: Wow! So, was there a specific moment when the idea of Fiddlehead first sparked for you?
Stephanie Deaken: I'm not sure if it was a specific moment. It was a series of meetings, that my colleague Breanne and I had together just casually to dream, and a dream state. And as my husband and I also started dreaming about owning a property one day and starting a family, [00:04:00] we started looking for property. And I guess the exact moment would've been when we first pulled into this property and went down the driveway and I got the goosebumps, met the farm dog and thought, okay, we're doing this. This is, how it's happening and happening quicker than I thought, but I am so glad that it did.
Christa Hein: Nice. So, for listeners who have never been there, can you paint a picture of Fiddlehead Care Farm, what someone might see, hear, or feel when they arrive?
Stephanie Deaken: Okay, so, right now is a beautiful time of year in the fall. So, I will start there. As you drive down the driveway, it's lined with red, orange, and yellow maple trees, which is so beautiful to see. And I've heard families just give the description as soon as they pull into the driveway, their shoulders relax and they just take a deep breath and like we made it.
And that is honestly the best accolades that I could get from a family, just to hear just being on the property creates this sense of [00:05:00] calmness. So, they come here and we do have a few outbuildings. We have a barn and a giant arena which is a sand floor bottom. We have 15 acres of forest.
We have over 20 raised garden beds for them to explore. And we are in the process of building a greenhouse that we can continue our farming journey up for longer months in Canada. Yeah.
Christa Hein: Nice. So, you describe yourself as a therapist first and a farmer second. How does that show up in your daily work on the farm?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, so I think the most challenging part to describe what care farming is and what our care farming is, is that we actually do the, myself and the staff that are employed here have a clinical background. So I am a regulated healthcare professional. I'm a social worker. I have my master's degree in social work, and my colleagues have similar background.[00:06:00]
So, we've gone to school and have got an education on how to support children in different modalities. So, we bring that to the work we do, but instead of an office space, which can often feel institutionalized or have a lot of trauma associated with it with the kids that we work with, we are outside.
So, 50 acres of farmland. So, we are incorporating animal assisted therapy and nature-based practices in the interventions that we provide. So an example for this would be, sitting with our therapy pig Luna and you know, she just provides a lot of comfort and there's laughter and there's giggles. And we're brushing her and all of a sudden, the child's mind is distracted and focused on what they're doing with a pig, but distracted on sort of those challenging times.
And then I can ask those questions when I see their physical body relax and see that they're [00:07:00] having fun and say, how was school today? Like, tell me things that went well, tell me one thing that didn't go so well and then it's just easier for them to talk about. So, if the child's interest is in animals, we are doing that with the pig and the chickens and the cats.
But if their interest is in nature and gardens, we're doing that while their hands are digging in the dirt and picking tomatoes from the vine and those sort of things.
Christa Hein: What a beautiful way to make them comfortable in order to be vulnerable and share.
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, definitely. Or they often say like, that was a fun time at the farm. I wanna come back. But they don't really realize that they are actually learning some coping skills at the same time that they can utilize and generalize in their life, right?
So, we talk about the importance of nature on our brains and bodies and how they just feel so different when they're here.
And wow, look how easy that was to just get outside for one hour, put your screens down, and treat yourself [00:08:00] to the wonderful, you know, calmness that nature and sensory experience that nature can bring to them.
Christa Hein: Could you walk us through what a typical session might look like for one of your groups that you offer for children, teens or young adults?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, so we offer individual sessions as well as group sessions, so a variety of programs that might look like one-on-one work with a child and their counselor, or it might look like a group of a hundred kindergartners coming for a field trip.
We also have summer camp. We have a parent and taught program, and we have life skills programs, again, individually or in groups. So, we talked a little bit about what a one-on-one session would look like. In a group setting, we use farming to help promote social skills and coping skills. So, we work with a lot of children who have a neurodiversity. So they may be on the autism spectrum. They may have some learning difficulties. They [00:09:00] may just have some major social anxiety and scared to hang around or initiate conversations with their similar aged peers.
So all of a sudden, you bring them to the farm and we are digging in the garden. Yesterday we just had a fabulous group here and they found this giant beet that probably weighs about 20 pounds.
We had to look up in the Guinness Book of World Records to see if we could be in it. But the joy that brought all five of them together - had to each use a shovel to dig this out, to pull it out as a team, to laugh together to be in awe, the amazing teamwork they did. All of a sudden, these five kids that don't talk to any of their classmates, hate going to school because they have to be in close proximity to other kids were shoulder to shoulder, working together and laughing and it was just such, so amazing to see. And it's just one of the examples how farming can bring communities together, right?
Christa Hein: Yeah. So do those [00:10:00] same kids see each other every week or was that like a one-time group, or are they having repeat connections with the same kids?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, so that is a group that comes biweekly. So, every other week, just three hours, and their major complaint is, it should be all day Steph! Why is this only three hours?
In other countries, care farming is quite prevalent. Where, like in the UK they have thousands of care farms in care farming and social prescribing they call it is so popular and they're so ahead of our time in Canada that a doctor can write on a prescription “visit a care farm” and it will be fully covered.
And I know in the United States, the care farming model is similar where they have groups of individuals, usually with neurodiversities coming to a farm to learn those social skills, life skills, farm skills, and they come for a day, like a day programming type of thing that may or may not be funded.
Right. So that program aligns most closely with that care farming model where they [00:11:00] come every other week here to work together as a team on the farm.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's so beautiful. Every community needs to have one.
Stephanie Deaken: Definitely. I agree.
Christa Hein: So I noticed on your website you mentioned that you don't require a diagnosis or a doctor's referral for people to participate.
Why was that an important choice for you?
Stephanie Deaken: I think there is a lot of stigma against mental health and people can sometimes be afraid to go to their doctor, and as I mentioned, like it feels very institutionalized sometimes to go to a hospital or to doctor to talk about challenges they may have.
And I like to say, you know, we all have mental health needs, we all have challenges. You don't have to have a diagnosis and be taking medication for anxiety to feel anxious, right? Or get a label of I am depressed to have sad moments. Right. So we can all benefit from nature and animal interactions for sure.
And I just want that stigma of mental health to go away and [00:12:00] to know that it's okay just to come to the farm and to learn about those things. That's often the first step is just learning about our mental health and how that affects our bodies on a daily basis.
Christa Hein: That's so inclusive too. Include everybody who might have that need or that desire to be there. I love that.
Stephanie Deaken: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Christa Hein: So beside your therapeutic programs, you also host schools and virtual farm tours and community events. Why is it important to you that Fiddlehead be open to the wider community too?
Stephanie Deaken: I think to raise awareness about that mental health stigma I talked about, but just about care affirming.
And again, once people start hearing about care farms and we are acknowledged for what we do. And it's growing and we are at the point now where I get inquiries from all over the world, definitely Canada and other farms in Ontario saying, how do we become a care farm? This sounds great. [00:13:00] I also am a therapist and have a passion for outside and how do I create this?
So, we've become a mentor for those individuals. But it's still not an accredited or regulated thing here in Canada to care farming. So it's important to talk about care farming and go out in the community and let people know that, where we are and how we exist and the importance of nature. So I think that's a big piece of it.
Christa Hein: How many people can you serve in your community?
Stephanie Deaken: Well, I think last year we supported over 750 kids. And we have a small staff of three part-time staff. So, again, we have the space to do that. And we're quickly growing for sure.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So for families who come to Fiddlehead, what kind of ripple effects have they mentioned or do you notice when they return home or back to school?
Stephanie Deaken: Hmm. That's a great question. I love that [00:14:00] question.
I think the best way to describe the ripple effect that our programs have on the children, families we work with is by giving an example. So I met with a young teen yesterday and she came fully cross armed and a pout on her face and head down and said, I don't wanna be here.
I’d rather have been going home right after school and going to my video games. And I'm, you know, she's scared of what she's missing, her video games. And so I said, let's just try it. Let's just see how it goes. And within 30 minutes of just hanging out with the cats and them bringing her laughter and walking around the farm and seeing the tomatoes grow, she started smiling. And I could see the physical effect that it had on her.
So at the end of our session, I got her to rate on sort of a line from the sad face of where she felt to the happy face, and she was off the line to beyond happy. So it was a great visual for her to say, see, look where you are now. And [00:15:00] then she took that energy home and the mom said, well, instead of going home right to her video game, like she would've after school, she didn't, she stayed outside for longer.
She went and brushed her own dog. Like, so then that creates this happiness in the family who were fighting with her to constantly get off of the screen. They didn't have that and everything just was a peaceful evening. So that's just one family as example of coming here for a short hour changed the whole trajectory of their family dynamics in that one night.
So thinking about hosting a class of 30 or two classes of, you know, multiple kids and how the ripple effect could be on their family each night is really exciting and inspiring to hear.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So are you working with the children alone or are there times when the families are working with you and learning coping skills together with their [00:16:00] children?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, definitely, definitely both. And our programming is flexible in the fact that we have individual work, we also do sibling work. So we have brothers and sisters and sisters and sisters come. Sometimes they both come and have their own therapists and then we come together at the end. And oftentimes we're doing family work as well.
So yeah, all of the above.
Christa Hein: Wow. Impacting the whole family. So, you mentioned that you've been doing this for about 10 years now. What have been some of your biggest lessons from balancing the worlds of therapy and farming?
Stephanie Deaken: Biggest lessons? That's a great question. I think balancing the world of therapy and farming is easy. It comes natural. Sometimes as a therapist I have a session planned, and then we go in with the chickens and something in life happens, you know, they lay an extra large egg that we didn't plan for and we end up spending 15 minutes of the session [00:17:00] examining that one egg together, and that's okay. Right?
As a therapist, you have to go where the child is. You have to start where the client's at. And I think just giving them that choice and control of the session in a way is very empowering for them. It increases their comfort level. A big thing we do is just focus on that strength based. So wow, you collected that egg and that chicken only laid that egg for you - how special is that!
They leave here feeling more confident. They leave here with a sense of pride. Wow, I did that, I collected that egg myself. I'd never done that before. And that's a, that's great. That's a goal in itself. And as a therapist, you have to be okay with, well, that didn't go as I planned, but, look at the smile that was on that child's face when they left here.
And even though we didn't accomplish teaching them this coping skill this time or this activity, well, they left with a different skill on that, you know, that [00:18:00] happiness and self-compassion, and maybe that's more important, right? So go with the flow.
Christa Hein: Yeah. So, it sounds like you are farming for the therapy rather than farming for production. Do you do any kind of production or is what you harvest just a pleasant benefit of the therapy farm?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah. Right now, what we harvest just goes towards the clients themselves. So, when they pick the eggs, they take those eggs home. And we plant the seeds of the tomatoes together, watch the plant grow as the season goes on and they get to harvest those tomatoes and take them home.
So right now we're just a small production. We're just giving the fruits and vegetables and eggs away to the clients. But the dream is to grow. And we do have plans to have a greenhouse in which I will love to and plan to and hope to employ individual neurodiversities so they will be [00:19:00] able to, yes, have the benefits of growing all of their fruits and vegetables, but also have that employment experience as well. And that social interaction of selling their produce.
So that's the dream, is that eventually we will be able to sell our produce using the clients that are currently working here.
Christa Hein: What an ambitious and beautiful goal that is. Oh, amazing. So I imagine that building this whole endeavor, the farm, the therapy staff, that you've encountered lots of challenges throughout your growth. Can you share any of what those challenges might be and how you might have navigated that?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, I think along the way there's been a few challenges. So in the beginning stages it was just more maybe of a marketing challenge you wanna call it. Letting people know who we are and what we do and the importance of that. When COVID hit, actually it was a quite a [00:20:00] benefit to us because all of a sudden this idea that we are preaching, get outside, it's really great for mental health. People had to be outside and some of our programs just grew huge. Because especially our parent and taught program, I'm thinking of, 'cause families were looking for places to take their families and children outside and we were able to then show that.
So that really helped us in a way. And then as we continued that ride again at just promoting that idea of the importance of putting down those screens and having children outside in nature. So that's been a big challenge and working with that. A lot of the therapists that I know and colleagues since COVID time went online and then realized, oh, actually this is easier for me too online.
But we didn't do that. We are still trying to say, no, our services are not available online. You need to come to the farm to reap the benefits of that. So, you know, so then now we're [00:21:00] kind of into that challenge too, just about explaining the benefits of nature. Once they get here and see it, they understand that.
I think another, of course, obvious one for any small business is finance. Finance. Of course, we are non-profit. We do not get any ministry funding from our government. And so all of our funds come from grants that we have to apply to. Sometimes we've been really successful at those and sometimes we haven't.
The competition for grants is getting more and more. So that is a big challenge is that funding piece. Because of course, having staff and our animals and our property, it all, it all takes money. So, we just are starting to go down the route of fundraising. So this is a new journey for us as a team because who would've thought a farm would need to fundraise this.
So again, right. It's very interesting. But we see, recognize the importance of that. And with our board of directors, we're going to be starting some fundraising soon. [00:22:00] So that's exciting.
And yeah, I think just another big challenge that's come fairly recently is just the needs of the children we work with. Some of those children aren't able to be served in other areas due to their behavioral needs. And so we are trying to accommodate that as well.
But of course, safety is our number one priority for our clients as well. So just letting our clientele understand and know that like this is a working firm. There are going to be things like tools around. But at the same time, being able to support those clients who have the biggest behavioral or impulsive challenges.
So that's a new one for us that we're working through, safety procedures and policy writing and all of that.
Christa Hein: So for others who are interested in starting or are inspired by your interview to start a care-based or therapeutic farm of their own. Is there any advice you would offer for getting started [00:23:00] or following through?
Stephanie Deaken: Yeah, you definitely need to have that farming background. I know therapists who have a love for animals in nature that want to do similar thing, but owning your own piece of property and knowing how to farm that land is a whole other challenge. And especially working with animals, right? Because they can be unpredictable and you need to know what you're doing. You need to have a background in that animal care and that farming care to be able to do that.
I also, you know, there may be people who have a farming background and say, okay, we wanna be able to support individuals with neurodiversities or those with mental health challenges. But I don't have the clinical side of things.
So there may be other programming that you can do especially. You know your animals and your land. Well, of course, welcoming, other people in the community to enjoy your space, but you just have to make sure you have the right safety measures in place.
So the right insurances, the right like background and, and education and [00:24:00] knowing what you're doing. So I guess just prepping yourself and getting all that background and training.
There's some great groups out there that people can join. There is a care farming network, I think that's mostly in the states.
So, join in that. They have wonderful webinars about starting up care farms. That's a great way to start and just yeah, keep that passion and learn what you can. I'm excited and reach out to me definitely so that I can help walk you through it and just hear about what's happening. Because I love hearing about all of the care farms popping up all over the world.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's so awesome. So how can people learn more about your work and get involved with Fiddlehead Care Farm?
Stephanie Deaken: So you can visit our website, which is just fiddleheadcarefarm.com. All of our programs are there.
As a small business, we run on volunteers, so we're always looking for support and help with that. So that application is there online. [00:25:00] As I mentioned, we'll be starting some fundraising. So look for us on social media. We are on Instagram and on Facebook. So as we grow and you see us on those social media platforms, please reach out and we would love to hear from y'all.
Christa Hein: Ah, awesome. Steph, what you've built is such a beautiful reminder of how nature and animals can support healing, not just for kids and families, but for all of us. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and the story behind Fiddlehead Care Farm.
Stephanie Deaken: Thank you so much for having me.
Christa Hein: Absolutely. To our listeners, I hope today's conversation inspired you. And as always, if you enjoy these stories, please follow the show and leave a review. It helps more farm educators find us. Until next time, keep teaching, keep growing, and keep connecting people to the land.
Christa Hein: Hey farm educators. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Before you go, I've got something special for you. If you're ready to build a farm education [00:26:00] program that people are excited to book, grab my free guide, Five Simple Steps to Growing an In-Demand Farm Education Program. It's packed with the same steps I used to grow my own farm education business.
It'll help you get noticed, attract clients, and make an impact. Just head over to www.farmeducatorsroadmap.com/fivesimplesteps to get your free copy. It's quick, easy, and will make your programs irresistible. I can't wait to see what you create. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
