(gritty music) (gritty music continues) - Welcome to "A Shot of Ag."

Small towns: they're the backbone of America, and what makes them so great is the great people that live in them.

We have two of those great people today: Jim and Laura Sniff.

How you guys doing?

- Great, how are you?

- Good, good.

- You're from Chillicothe.

- Mm hm.

- Uh huh.

For the seven people in Peoria that don't know where Chillicothe is, can you describe it?

- It's just north of Peoria, about a 10 minute drive, maybe 10, 15 minutes right up the river on 29.

Can't miss it.

- It's a river town.

- Yes.

- Can you see the river from your farm?

- No, not really.

- No.

- No, we're pretty high up though, but we have a nice valley, but it's, yeah, you can't really see the river.

- Yeah, there's a little saddle that you can peer across the river from about five miles out, seeing to, what would it be, Tazewell?

Well, Woodford County, I guess, a little bit, yeah.

- Well, that's good because you don't want flooded, right?

You guys are up.

- We're up on the ridge.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

How long you guys been married?

- 26 years this May.

- [Rob] Okay, are you from Chillicothe originally?

- I'm from Northwest Indiana, just south of Chicago.

- [Rob] And Jim?

- Dunlap; farm kid from Dunlap.

- Gotcha.

How did you guys meet?

- We met in a biology class at ICC.

Both of us were going back to school after college.

- That, that does not sound really romantic, 'cause you're generally like cuttin' up stuff, aren't you?

- It was, I don't remember.

It was so long ago.

That was 27 years ago.

But yeah, he was a cute lab partner and- - [Rob] Uh huh.

- I was minding my own business, sittin' at the table all by myself.

She came in and sat down right like this, right next to me.

"Hey, how you doing?"

- [Rob] Sounds horrible, Jim.

- It was pretty rough.

- The whole world feels bad for you.

(Rob and Jim chuckling) 27 years ago.

Yeah, love at first sight.

You guys hit it off, get married.

- Yep.

- Proposed to her at ICC.

- With two puppies, so I couldn't say no.

- Yeah.

- [Rob] Okay, what, what?

- Yeah.

That's a whole 'nother story.

- It's a whole 'nother story.

- [Rob] Was it a dowry, or...?

- But yeah, we had a whole production going there and we went into the- - The Tranquility Room.

- The study room, it was called the Tranquility Room.

- And we say like our life has never been tranquil since.

- Yeah, life's never been tranquil since then.

- I remember that room in college.

(all laughing) Two kids?

- Two kids, yep.

Jimmy is our oldest, and he's 25, and Allison is 24.

- Okay, let's jump right into it.

So Jimmy is autistic, correct?

- Yes.

- And that had, so is that something you know, right at birth?

- No, in Jimmy's case it was a little different than what a lot of families go through.

He, at the age of one, the doctor said, "We think he has cerebral palsy."

And we went in for the MRI, and that came back normal.

And then we went to a developmental pediatrician thinking that we were out of the woods.

And he basically said to us, "Your son is mentally retarded," were his actual words.

- [Rob] What year was this?

- This would've been 1990.

No, it would've been 2000.

- 2000.

- 2000.

- Okay.

- And our world really kinda came crashing down, and we started going to Easterseals.

They were a blessing every day until Jimmy was three and went into the school system.

And then when he went into the school system, we had found a farm, we were living in the Dunlap area, and we had found a farm.

Jim always wanted to get back on the farm.

And we kinda- - Let me interrupt you, all right, because I have kids, and I think back to my first one.

I mean, just, I was paranoid, right?

You just didn't want anything to be wrong.

- Right.

- So I mean, when you got that diagnosis, I mean, I would be terrified.

- It was a... - It was a life-changing situation.

- Yeah, yeah.

- We'd never, in our families, and really surrounding, never really been involved with anyone with special needs that much.

And so our, what I call a roadmap to reality, at that time totally changed.

- Yeah, yeah, totally changed.

And you learn a whole, it's a whole new world.

You know, there's acronyms for everything, and there's no guidebook.

There's no, you know, this is what you're facing.

And he really wasn't diagnosed with autism until about the age of 12.

He has cognitive impairment, epilepsy, and the autism diagnosis didn't come till later.

At the time, he was very social, and a very happy, you know, smiley baby.

- [Rob] But you guys, you were young.

- Yeah, well, yeah.

- It sounds selfish to say, but if I tried to put myself in your shoes, it's like you've got all these plans in life, and you get this news and you're like, "Oh, man, this is gonna take our lives up now."

Was there a fear of that?

- Well, yeah.

Yeah.

- Yeah, and in my case, I'm a little older.

And I waited until I was 40 to get married.

- [Laura] And I was 30.

- First time and have children.

- 10 years between us.

And so, you know, it's a situation that life puts you in and you can either wring your hands and lament and woe is me, or you can do something about it positive.

And I realized that, all that time, effort, building a business and waiting for that day, it was going to be different.

So we pushed ahead.

We continued to try and have a family, and raise a family, and just navigate through the whole special needs area, the arena that we knew nothing about.

- Yeah.

Does it, personal question.

- Sure.

- Does it stress a couple's relationship or did it bring you tighter together?

- It's, it- - Depends on the situation.

- [Rob] Depends on the day?

- Oh, yeah.

(chuckling) I mean, literally, there's days it's very difficult.

- Yeah.

- And there's days you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- It's, I think the greatest, well, one of the greatest, there's so many blessings to it now that we've gone through the journey.

But one, we've met amazing people along the way.

Two, it makes you really slow down and appreciate the little things, you know?

And like the stuff that we thought was so important when we got married, and before that, that's just, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is that your son or daughter with disabilities, that they're gonna be happy, that you can help them as much as you can along the journey.

And that, and as we started finding out, and the reason we do what we do is because you wanna advocate for them.

And you want the world to know that they're amazing people.

And so many times they're so marginalized and put to the side, and put in a classroom that's down the hall and not with the other kids.

And when we were in school, people with disabilities, I can't even remember being in class with any.

- [Rob] No, no, we weren't.

It was, yeah.

- And it's, you know- - They went to Mrs. Leaper's class.

- Mrs. Leaper.

(chuckling) So it just, it really made us become advocates, and really gave us a calling, a huge calling.

- Yeah, you suddenly become aware of a world you really never knew existed.

- Yeah, very much.

- That is very well said, yeah.

- And you know, as I mentioned a minute ago, you either rise to the occasion and do the best you can for your kids, or you kind of suffer through it a little bit and spend your life wringing your hands.

Laura and I are not that type of people.

- No, and obviously you're not.

- Get after it and press forward, you know.

- You talk about doing best for your kids.

Let's get to that.

Tell me about the farm.

- Well, when Jimmy was three, he went into early childhood education program at Dunlap.

And we were still trying to navigate through a lot of the hoops and hurdles.

And I had been looking for a long time for a farm, place to raise a family and get back to my rural roots.

And we found this place up in Chillicothe.

We were able to purchase it, and at the time, my maintenance supervisor from my business, he and his family moved in and were working or living there.

And so we started a process of rebuilding things, and improving things, and fixing the property up.

But we knew it was a real beautiful property, very picturesque, rolling topography.

But it had a creek, it had a pond, it had timber, tillable, pasture.

It had everything we were looking for.

And we knew that there was more to that farm than just being a farm and a place where we would live and raise our kids.

And so, out of the blue, Jimmy's teacher one day asked Laura, Mrs. Davis, she said, "Hey, I heard you guys got a farm recently, "and what do you think about doing a field trip up there?

"Is that possible?"

And we were like, Laura was like, "Well, yeah, sure.

"We don't have anything there.

"There's no animals or anything like that."

I mean, we had a trailer.

- It was like, it might be really boring.

- Yeah, we had a trailer, and we had a cash rent farmer that still farms for us.

And we had what, a sandbox, and a playground in a little camping area.

- Yeah, and we went and got pumpkins from, I think Tanners.

And we were like, we're gonna have this magic pumpkin patch.

And we just put 'em in the grass.

And we had the kids sit up on the John Deere with you.

- Yeah, they all took pictures on my old 4020.

And we did a hayride, went all the way around the property.

And in fact, I'm not sure if it was that time, but numerous times during our field trips, depending on the year, the farmer's in the field, so the kids get to see these giant combines, or big tractors, or a planter, or something.

And it's just, it was pretty amazing because right away we realized that um- - [Laura] Kids could be themselves.

- The kids could be kids.

- Yeah, yeah.

And they were in a place that was judgment-free, you know?

Where the parents and the teachers all said to us, "That was the best field trip we've ever been on."

And Jim and I are kinda like, "But we didn't do a heck of a lot."

- And the teachers, the aides, the staff, everybody that came along, they were not stressed out.

They just let everything slide off, and just enjoyed.

The kids were playing games and things.

Still to this day, you know, the phones are gone.

No iPads or anything.

They just come out and before you know it, they get off the bus and they're just being kids.

- [Rob] Yeah.

- [Laura] Yeah.

- They're shootin' baskets, they're playing with our animals, they're dancing, they're just runnin' all over.

And we have structured programs, too, but they can just be kids, and roam, and have fun.

- So was this just a farm you bought, this wasn't a family farm or anything like that?

- No, just a farm we found.

It had been in the prior family's line for I think about 150, 175 years.

And to this day, we still do a lot of things to honor that family and respect them, and repurpose materials from the farm, and so on, yeah.

- Okay.

I'm not sure, I've heard, so the field trips, are these special needs kids that were coming out?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- So when Jimmy's first teacher came, and the class came when he was three, so it's been 22 years ago.

They wanted to keep coming back.

And we were like, "Okay, you know, we'll do some more," 'cause we would come and meet 'em.

And then more schools kind of found out that we were hosting- - [Rob] They're sneaky that way.

- They're sneaky that way, yeah.

- Was it Bradford?

- No, it wasn't Bradford.

(Laura and Rob laughing) It wasn't Bradford, but they, so then other schools wanted to come, and then we started hearing about places in the country that were places that were out in the country.

One was Down Home Ranch down in Texas where people, they had camps, and people work, and they lived on the farm.

So anyway, God really started putting on our hearts, like, you have this land, you're seeing the kids that are coming out that are just loving it.

Your son loves dirt, and John Deere, and anything related to the outdoors.

- Yeah.

- So how can you keep this land and not share it?

So we ended up moving to the farm, and if you fast forward to today, we made it a nonprofit.

It's called Blue Ridge Community Farm.

It sits on Blue Ridge Road just outside of Chillicothe.

And we welcome, from May to the end of October, over a thousand children and adults with disabilities.

And it can be physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, and we never charge for them to come out.

We finally, we have animals.

We have alpacas, and donkeys, and a horse, and chickens, and two dogs.

- Of course you do.

Are they the same two dogs that you proposed with?

- No.

- Oh, no.

That's our third set now since we've been married.

But they're brother and sister golden retrievers.

- Yeah.

- Every set, every pair we've had all those years, yeah.

So these are the newbies.

They're about five or six years old.

- Yeah.

- I guess now.

- It can't be cheap to maintain all that.

- Well, we- - It's a lot of work.

- It's a lot of work.

We get donations.

Mostly everything we do with Blue Ridge Community Farm is volunteers.

I run all the field trips and I have volunteers that help with the field trips.

But we have life skills classes from high schools come, we have elementary schools come, we have adult group homes come.

So many times there's kids that come that have never been on a farm, that have never been up to donkey, that have never- - [Jim] Held a chicken that lays green eggs.

- Held a chicken, you know.

- Oh, I bet there's lots of crazy stuff.

The next months, all they, "I want a chicken, I want a chicken."

(all laughing) - A lot of 'em, I mean, they don't wanna leave when it's time to go.

They're crying, and they're hugging us, and everything.

And we incorporate music and dance into the field trips, just playtime- - [Rob] Do you dance?

- A lot of different things.

- He's a good dancer.

- The kids dance.

- You are a good dancer.

- What kind of dancing does he do?

- Does he do?

Oh, he's really good like at weddings and stuff, when, you know, you've got... - Oh, like the ballroom, or the two step?

- No.

- No- - This is fascinating, yeah.

(Laura laughing) You know what would be great is to see an example right here.

- The old guy's got some moves.

(all laughing) Oh, I'll bust my mic.

- Oh yeah.

So I'm trying to envision this, but I mean, it's gotta be, it's gotta be a feeling that has to be hard to describe, especially knowing you're the parents of a child with disabilities, knowing what that is, to give them such a great experience.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I gotta tell you a real quick story.

If I can get through it.

Our music director, who is now our executive director at Picket Fence Foundation, was out one time and she does a limbo dance with all the kids and gets them incredibly involved, Katie.

And they were doing a limbo dance, and I came across the barnyard, I was doing something else, and I look over and I had noticed a young boy that was paraplegic in a wheelchair earlier on.

And here he is, he's so excited, so passionate, so wanting to participate... - He got down, yeah.

- He got off his wheelchair- - And went under the limbo.

- And was crawling on the grass under the limbo stick... - [Rob] Just to be part of it.

- Just to be involved, and be a part of it, and to be allowed to be a part of something like that.

It was special for him.

- And didn't wanna go under it in his wheelchair.

Had to get in.

Because we've done that, too.

- And that's all it takes is a moment like that and you're hooked.

And we welcome 50 different organizations in schools now.

We have EPIC, we have CWTC, TCRC.

- All the schools around will come.

- Apostolic Christian Home from Morton.

All the school districts.

The last several years, five years, this will be our fifth year now, coming up in the fall, we do a concert series where we have free music.

We have a big concert stage.

It's 24 feet by 32 feet.

You can put an orchestra on the thing.

Sits on a two-acre hill.

You literally park in a hay field, you walk right over the hill, and it's there.

It looks out over a beautiful west-facing valley.

And this year we're doing four concerts.

They start in September, mid-September, the 15th, 22nd, 29th, and then October 6th.

We have some of our special needs vendors on site, also, selling some of the products they make.

And it's developed into really a great time.

People come, it's free, completely free.

It's a BYOB thing.

You can bring a blanket or a lawn chair, and you just enjoy the music.

It's America at its finest.

Very simple.

That's what makes it successful is because it's so simple, so basic.

And it's from 2:00 to 5:00 every Sunday afternoon.

And people just come and they relax.

You got kids throwing Frisbees, dancing, you've got grandparents, you've got babies.

The music is all family-friendly.

- It's kind of a way for people to see the farm, you know, for the public to see- - And learn more about it.

We have Eagle Scout projects for the Boy Scouts that we do.

We've done numerous ones.

In fact, I'm working on one right now that's gonna come to fruition soon.

So a lot of things going on.

- You know, I didn't think about this until you were telling the story about the kid in the wheelchair.

But a lot of people wouldn't do this just for the liability of it.

I mean, is that a concern?

- I mean, we have insurance.

But in 22 years, we haven't had one issue.

- We haven't had any incidents.

- We had one- - We have the kids a lot of times go right out into the pasture with our alpacas.

- Yeah.

- They're that friendly and safe.

- They'll put a carrot in their mouth and the alpaca will come out and take it outta their mouth.

- I'm sorry; they're a dumb-looking animal.

(Jim laughing) They are.

- Hey now.

- No, they are.

- You grow to love 'em.

- You grow to love 'em.

- Yeah, they grow on you.

- I never dreamed that an alpaca would be on a farm I would own, but that one of our board of directors members told us about 'em, and we ended up sure enough, looking at 'em, and we fell in love with them, and they're an incredible benefit to our farm and what we do.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- They're interesting.

- They're a little gamey if you ask me.

- You're not supposed to eat 'em.

- I hear they are good, though.

(Laura and Rob laughing) - It's gotta be an incredible feeling, too, to have people come out and enjoy your farm like that.

When people come out, like to the event where they've got the music, are you, do you get a chance to kind of educate them on what you're doing out there?

- Oh yeah- - We talk about the mission.

- Yeah, we talk about the mission during the different bands that play.

At our other nonprofit, Picket Fence, we have people with disabilities that make products and sell them.

And so they're the only people that are selling things at our concerts are people with disabilities that make products.

So that's a great way for the public to see that these folks, they aren't defined by their disability.

I mean, they're doing amazing things.

So yeah, it's a great time for us to spread the word and let the public know what we do, 'cause a lot of people still don't know, even though we've been doing it for 22 years.

If you're not in that world, you wouldn't necessarily find out about us.

- Does people in Chillicothe, do they know what you're doing?

- Oh, yeah.

- Oh, yeah.

- Chille's an incredibly supportive community.

- It's amazing.

- Extremely giving community like I've never seen before, for the size; just amazing.

They've welcomed us, and especially at Picket Fence Foundation, they support tremendously, the community, the whole region does.

But yeah, they- - Yeah, they've been amazing.

- They've been incredible, incredible community.

All the way to the- - [Laura] Good people.

- The mayor, the chamber of commerce, the economic development director- - Optimist Club.

- Optimist Club, all those organizations have been just wonderful to work with and very supportive.

- You guys have also started the Picket Fence Foundation.

Here's the thing, we've got a half-hour show, and somebody has done a horrible job at time management.

I blame you.

(Laura laughing) - That's okay.

- Sorry.

- My fault, sorry.

- It's own show, literally.

so at this point, we have not even talked about the amazing things that we need to talk about.

So, I mean, would you guys be willing to come back for another show?

- Sure, yeah, absolutely.

- And then we leave the people, they're like, "Oh no, I wanna know about the Picket-" it's a teaser.

See how you get 'em?

- (laughing) Yeah, hook 'em in.

- But yeah, it is, it's an amazing, it's an amazing foundation where you have the people with special needs that are making really, really cool stuff.

- Yeah, and they're employed, too.

They're employed there, yeah.

- And you're selling them in Chillicothe there?

- Yes.

- Yes.

- Yeah, and there's gotta be a whole story behind that building, and there always is.

Whenever you buy a place like that, there's always a huge story behind it.

- Yeah.

(Rob chuckling) - Let me ask you this, to leave on it.

I mean, do you guys ever have time for yourself?

- Not a lot.

(laughing) Not a lot.

We are, uh... - We're pretty busy.

- We're pretty busy.

- Yeah, we probably work 75-hour weeks.

- Yeah, we work a lot.

- And then we spend Sunday usually going to see our son.

- Or he'll come home with us, you know, and visit.

And it's great because he can come home to the farm and be with us, for, you know, a week or something.

- Yeah.

- And then we take him back to the facility where he lives currently.

The idea is eventually to get him back home in a group home or in some apartments that we have that we hope to transfer into housing for special needs adults in the near future.

- [Rob] If people wanna find you on social media or the internet real quick?

- Blue Ridge Community Farm on Facebook and Instagram.

And then blueridgecommunityfarm.org is our website.

- Okay, Jim and Laura Sniff from Chillicothe.

I want to thank you guys for everything that you're doing.

Truly making the world a better place, and that's not easy to do.

So I know it takes a lot from you guys personally, but I can't imagine, you'll never know the difference that you're making in a lot of people's lives.

So I look forward to next week.

We can continue, we can actually talk about this.

I'll do a better job at time management.

(Laura laughing) - Thank you, Rob.

- Thank you, we appreciate it.

- Jim and Laura, thank you very much.

Everybody else, we'll catch you next week.

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