Tour the Center Farm — Where Special Needs Children Learn Farming Skills with Animals & Gardening

These cows milk twice a day. So the boys help in the afternoon and they sit on this little bench and they're as you see here the boys are [music] cutting vegetables. As you see, it's with a special knife so they don't cut themselves to keep it safe. About 4 hours ago, maybe even a little bit less. Our mother, she gave birth to these little twins. >> Not even 4 hours old. >> Guys, I got to show you this. I'm super amazed. I just came to visit the special children's center farm. >> Look what's going on over here. Over here we have we have Yity Canar. Yity, tell us what's happening over here. So if I am here we are on the center farm. You could see over here the boys are feeding the cows. >> What the center is, some people don't know. Some people just see a building and they hear about a farm. But let me tell you what it really is. Center is a big big family that's not just in Lakewood. It's in the five towns in Brooklyn now. And what we do in the center is anything to help boys, girls, and families that have boys and girls with special needs. Now, the farm was created for a specific reason. A few years ago, the center was having this dilemma that there's a certain point that you get to that eventually programs and government funding stops. Now, what do you do with the boys that are that age? They can't just sit around and ride away. They're also namas that have to be doing something and accomplishing. So, the center decided we're going to buy a farm. We're gonna have the boys come from a young age and every year we're going to train them to do more and more things. So eventually when they reach that age that the funding slows down, they could be part of a society. They could have a job on the farm. There's some boys that are amazing at cleaning stalls. Some boys are amazing at milking the cows. Some boys know how to ride horses better than anybody else and all that kind of stuff. So what we do on the farm is to train everybody and get them into the rhythm and get them into their jobs. >> In order to make everything easier and more convenient for the families, we offer transportation. So this over here is one of our around 10 vans and buses that we have to bring the boys in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, whatever it is. These are the vans that we're using to transport the kids. Fry them. Look around. There's chickens all over the place. And during the day, they're roaming around getting their food. And at night, they go in through this little thing over here. And then every morning, they lay eggs right over here. And the boys come and collect it. And with these eggs, >> Wow. >> some people buy this. And we send them out >> and do deliveries. And now, Fry, let me show you what we grow in our gardens over here. Right now it's the winter so there's nothing growing but we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, all different kinds of hot peppers, sweet potatoes, potatoes, basil leaves, rosemary, everything in these beds over here. The boys take care of them and what we do with this is we actually bring them in and we use them for different recipes that we cook on the farm. It's >> what you use the the vegetables. >> We use the vegetables for salads. We make pizza. We use the basil. We use we make tomato sauce. All that kind of stuff. Anything you could want from a farm, we make inside. And I'm going to show you soon what we do with our vegetables. Over here we have another big part of the farm is you see here the boys [music] are cutting vegetables. You see it's with a special knife so they don't cut themselves to keep it safe. What they're doing here is they're making a dip for shabas. And >> the way this works is we have a garden outside that the boys work on planting >> and with those vegetables that we grow, we like to make different recipes [music] and cook. [singing] >> Nice. Good job. [music] >> Here we keep the horses when they're at their outside shift. So 24 hours inside, 24 hours outside. They come out here, they have their hay, their water, and whatever else they need. This is the barn that we have for all the horses. You can see all the stalls are open now because the horses are outside now. They have 24-hour cycles inside, outside. But I want to show you upstairs, we have a classroom where there's a rebby that's giving class right now. The boys are learning Mishnayas. If you can see straight ahead, we have a very, very big indoor riding arena. This is where the boys go riding. >> Wow. some of our programs. >> Huge. >> This is our riding arena. We use this to do riding, horse training. We play ball inside here. Sometimes we have comees in here. We use it for anything that we need cuz it's a big room. Like you can see >> this is our classroom is giving class to employees. grows from the groundh from the ground. Cucumber. Very good. What's another example of something grows in the ground? >> Tomatoes. Very good. What happens now? We all know. What happens if you have tomatoes and cucumbers? >> And f a lot of work goes into a farm. Now the horses come inside. Somebody's got to clean up the stall after. So, the boys worked for a long time to learn how to take care of a stall to clean it up. Hi, Aby. Oh, that is so tough. [laughter] >> So, so cute to clean up the stall, to put down fresh shavings, to change the water, to put in new hay so the horses could come back in and have a fresh [snorts] bed. Part of having the horses is when they're inside and outside, somebody has to bring them out. So, we trained the boys to be able to bring the horses out. You see this is a little mini horse and he's going to bring it into the paddock that he's going to stay for overnight. And let me show you how we milk the cows. So, this these two little stations over here are the milking stations. These cows milk twice a day. So, the boys help in the afternoon and they sit on this little bench and they're milking the cows. And then with this milk, we try to deliver it to people. These are two cows that were born about 2 and 1/2 months ago. >> This is part of the 24 births that we had in the last 2 and 1/2 years. And soon I'm going to show you are lambs. Twin lambs that were born 3 hours ago. >> Wow, look at this sunset. This is nice. So, one thing after you finish cleaning a stool, you have to restock it with hay. So, these stalls over here have hay and shavings. And the boys come in here, they grab one flake of hay. It must be that somebody's really knowledgeable with our agriculture that somebody knows how to take care of these things. >> We have some people that are here that guide us how to do things like you see over here. If you look in here, this is corn. This is for the goats. So, the boys come here and they grind the corn and then we bring it out to put it into the goats feed. And on Thursdays, usually we try to have a comet here. We roast marshmallows in this riding arena. Somebody comes with a guitar. The boys sit around. We use pretty much the same playlist so the boys know which songs we're singing. We practice together. And you can see the little fire pit over there. Here [singing and music] we have our feeding room where we keep all the different types of pellets and food for the animals. He's going to fill up a bucket of alalfa pellets and we're going to bring them out to the goats. >> That's enough. That's enough. So frame the goats can't stay outside at night cuz it gets very very cold on the farm. So we have to bring them inside. The way we do it is we have a bucket. All the goats will follow. So usually we have a boy does it before >> take it. Shake, shake, shake. And I'm going to pop. >> And there you go. >> Shake. Shake. Keep shaking. >> Shake the bucket. They hear the noise. They know it's food. >> Let's go this way. Mayor, >> this way over here, >> mayor. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. >> Here you go. Go straight inside. They know where to go. >> Once they're inside, we give them the food that we use to bring them inside. >> How do you do it? How do you do it? >> So, we come in here >> and we also have woodworking. >> A lot of things that we have here like garbage cans, stools, and different things were built by the boys here on the farm. Cool. You look good in it. >> Let's go. >> Let's go. Let's go. >> Well done. >> Good job. >> Fine. You want to see something interesting? Right over here. About 4 hours ago, maybe even a little bit less. Our mother, she gave birth to these little twins. >> Not even 4 hours old. She >> This was today. >> Little noises. Not even 4 hours old. >> Little tiny babies. You don't want to get too close. You got to stay calm with them. >> They're just learning how to walk now. >> Cool. Oh, what's this? This is a bottle. >> This is the bottle. Elder, you want to come and try to feed him? >> Come bottle. Calmly. There you go. >> Good job. Tilt it up. >> What? He's scared. These >> are the peacks. Beautiful. >> F. If you look here on this wall, you see there's different frier assistant, dairy hand, hay manager. All these different jobs here with the pictures of the boys. These are jobs that the boys actually mastered and know how to do. So they are all on this wall over here and you can see exactly what everything is here. F. We're going to start doing my boys. Get ready. You got the palace on. That is the center farm. >> So Frian, what you saw here is the center farm. That's just a fraction of what actually is going on in center. There are more than a thousand families that are benefiting from the center center lakewood the center farm in deal seven group homes in Lakewood Center five towns center flatbush and we're running a campaign now. It's very hard to avoid but a lot of people were asking me why does center need money? Everything's funded. Everything's covered. The truth is it's not. Whatever you see is going on here you can imagine how many expenses go into this. Not everything gets covered. That's not the reality of things. So, in order to keep on providing for the Nishamus and their families, we need to raise at least $1.5 million now. And if you're able to help us, it would be a big big mitzvah to get this to help these nishas, their families to make life a little bit easier for them. Quiet.