Veteran organization in urgent need of new home, calling on community for help

HENDERSONVILLE, S.C. (WSPA) – Veterans Healing Farm in Hendersonville is in need of a new home after its landowner decided not to renew the lease on the property.

Now, organizers with the farm are working to spread the word in hopes of saving the non-profit.

Back in 2013, an Air Force veteran founded the farm with a focus on healthy eating for vets.

“But our mission has changed to veterans mental health,” said Executive Director of the non-profit, Alan Yeck. “Our exact mission is to enhance the mental, emotional, physical well-being of our nation’s veterans and their families.”

He said the farm has helped serve thousands of veterans over the years.

“Last year, we ran 49 workshops for 477 participants and all of those workshops are either therapies, equine therapy, canine therapy, music therapy, art therapy, neurofeedback therapy, suicide prevention,” said Yeck.

Each treatment path is different for each veteran.

“We’ll teach them anything or they don’t have to do anything,” Yeck explained. “[They can] just come out and be with other, other veterans, and their families.”

Yeck is a Marine Veteran. He said the farm helped him find peace nearly 30 years after serving.

“I didn’t know what I needed until I was here and started receiving it,” Yeck told 7NEWS. “I’ve had PTSD for 35 years, going back to my days in Beirut and I’ve been on meds and therapy and all that stuff.”

And Yeck wants to see that healing help others but worries the time might run out.

“The landowner informed us that she’s retiring and would not be renewing our lease, which ends August 15th,” he shared. “So we were given seven months or we have seven months to, to rebuild what took 11 years to build.”

Down to the final days, Vets Healing Farm is now looking to the community for help.

“We have been looking everywhere for property,” Yeck said. “We have been fundraising while we continue our normal programming, while we’re packing up and shutting down.”

Yeck said the ideal plot of land would be 10 acres or bigger. On the fundraising side, he added they need about $3 million, but have come up with nearly $600,000 dollars of that funding so far.

Megan Landreth is the Director of Operations for Veterans Healing Farm. She’s responsible for all of the logistics that go on behind the scenes.

As an Air Force veteran and the widow of a veteran, she knows how beneficial a place like this can be.

“That’s what touches my heart is being able to see that growth in the veterans and healing in them,” Landreth explained. “And for me, it was all of that as well. I have a lot of social anxiety and depression and I’ve been able to really open up and, and heal my on my own.”

Landreth fears, that without a new location, everything they’ve worked for will go away.

It’s scary to think that in less than a year this organization could disappear and not be here to take care of the veterans in this community and others
We need help just like everybody else. And this is an organization that does that.

Alan Yeck, and Megan Landreth, Thank You for Your Service

If you are interested in helping Veterans Healing Farm, want to make a donation or learn more, click here .

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WSPA 7NEWS.