Providing purpose

By JACE DICOLA

Jace.DiCola@gjsentinel.com

Robert Andrews Jr. joined the Marine Corps soon after becoming an adult, serving for 26 years before retiring in 2015 at the age of 45.

While Andrews wasn’t necessarily elderly, nearly three decades of active duty service — in which he was “blown up a few times” — had taken its toll.

By the time he retired, the Department of Veterans Affairs assigned him a 100% disability rating.

“I was to the point where I couldn’t walk across the parking lot, everything hurt,” Andrews said. “I’ve had numerous surgeries before and after I retired, about three years of surgery after surgery. The guy at the VA asked if I fell out of a plane without a parachute.”

The immobility and end of his military career left Andrews without a clear path or sense of purpose, but as a Mack resident, agriculture was all around him. One day, he asked a local sheep rancher how to get into the industry.

The rancher told him that the best way to learn is to just start, and handed him two bummer lambs (lambs rejected by their mothers).Andrews was instantly infatuated and instilled with purpose, but it didn’t cure his severely restricted mobility. That much was clear when Andrews would try moving or working with full-grown sheep, which can weigh upward of 350 pounds.

When all hope seemed lost, Andrews noticed a 2x3-inch ad in the newspaper for a program called AgrAbility; so, he attended a conference to learn more.

“AgrAbility provided a platform and resource for me to not only stay doing what I was doing, but to propel it to the next level,” Andrews said. “I tell a lot of people the sheep saved my life, and I think AgrAbility has played a huge part in that.”“Had I not been able to physically continue what I was doing, I would be in a much different place,” he added.

AN ANSWER FOR AILING FARMERS

AgrAbility is a federally funded initiative empowering farmers and ranchers who acquire a disability or struggle with aging to continue their work while ensuring their long-term safety and health.

Those goals are primarily accomplished by connecting producers with adaptive equipment, offering emergency

See PURPOSE, page 12A ➤

Robert Andrews Jr., owner and founder of New Liberty Wool Pellet, greets and feeds one of his herds of sheep grazing on a property in Fruita on Aug. 1. Andrews credits sheep with helping give him a purpose after retiring from the military in 2015. Also assisting Andrews in his endeavor is AgrAbility, a federally funded initiative empowering farmers and ranchers who acquire a disability or struggle with aging to continue their work while ensuring their long-term safety and health.

LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel

Robert Andrews Jr., owner and founder of New Liberty Wool Pellet, feeds raw wool into a pellet pressing machine that he acquired with the help of someone he met through AgrAbility. The wool pellet pressing machine kickstarted the second component of Andrews’ business. With that machine, he now produces and sells countless pounds of the compressed wool, which acts as an organic soil amendment and long-acting fertilizer.

Robert Andrews Jr., left, holds a lamb he calls a pocket lamb because of its outward personality during a tour of the New Liberty Wool Pellet facility and the pellet making process in Mack on Aug. 1.

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financial assistance and providing free, agriculture- specific counseling services for mental well-being and substance abuse.

According to AgrAbility Behavioral Health Specialist Julie Elliot, farming is a lifestyle, and not an easy one. No matter the circumstance, having a significant injury or disability can make the difference between continuing a generational endeavor and becoming unemployed.

“Maybe they were in a car wreck away from the farm, but it’s still preventing them from doing what they normally would do,” Elliot said. “It could be an injury on the farm, where their arm gets caught in a piece of machinery, so they no longer have that arm or the use of it.

“AgrAbility helps with the accommodations, types of machines or whatever (the individual needs) to be able to continue working.”

In Andrews’ case, the veteran received a portable handling system that would prove critical in the long-term health of himself and his business. The wheeled, metal contraption (between 10 and 20 feet long) resembles a corral, but with a grate floor and narrow, tunnel-like dimensions. When activated, padded material on the inside gently squeeze around the sheep to prevent movement.

The handling system boasts add-ons like an internal scale, to easily track livestock health, and a tilt table that can safely flip and hold livestock in an upward position, making maintenance efforts, like shearing and hoof trimming, all the easier.

“We have sheep fully grown that are 350 pounds, so handling those sheep was a big issue,” Andrews said. “I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of a grant for a sheep handling system … because we are all over the valley doing work.”

“We can take it to a spot, load the sheep (for transport), unload them, vaccinate them, treat them and do whatever we need to do,” he added. “That was huge.”

Under the guidance of an individual he met at an AgrAbility conference, Andrews also obtained private grant funding for a wool pellet pressing machine, which kickstarted the second component of his business. With that machine, he now produces and sells countless pounds of the compressed wool, which acts as an organic soil amendment and long-acting fertilizer. Elliot added that participating farmers and their work environment are thoroughly assessed to identify and meet their most important needs.

“(AgrAbility counselors) are not just meeting with the farmer or rancher, they’re meeting with the whole family and really want to observe their day-to-day activities,” Elliot said. “Then, they can figure out what would be the best accommodations for them to continue doing the type of work that they were doing before they got injured.”

BEHAVIORAL HEALTH

The state’s AgrAbility program was founded about 27 years ago, run through Colorado State University, in partnership with Goodwill Industries.

In 2021, AgrAbility received funding through the Colorado Behavioral Health Recovery Act to expand into the realm of behavioral health.

Elliot said mental health services are much needed in the industry, considering the disparity in suicide rates. The National Rural Health Association reported that the ag sector suicide rate (43.2 per 100,000 people) is more than 3½ times the national average.

AgrAbility’s approach to the often stigmatized topic has two prongs, the first being behavioral health specialists with a lived experience in agriculture.

Elliot is one of four across the state (each with a dedicated region), and spends much of her time providing one-onone stress management support, conducting wellness assessments and directly connecting participants with continued behavioral healthcare.“ I’m a sixth-generation farmer and rancher in Colorado, and someone who has knowledge of how to work with other farmers and ranchers is very important,” Elliot added. “There are so many things that someone in agriculture faces. Farmers and ranchers rely so much on the weather, the prices for their grains and cattle and things like that, and those are all out of their control.”

One of those potential service connections is the Colorado Agricultural Addiction and Mental Health Program (CCAMHP), where producers can access six free, confidential therapy sessions by providers trained to serve those in the ag business.

The other component of AgrAbility’s behavioral health efforts is educating the community in prevention and supporting mental health providers in understanding and incorporating the nuances of agriculture when working with a producer.

Provider education essentially demonstrates how behavioral health specialists can be more “agri-culturally responsive,” by emphasizing with the many nuances of the industry and how it may influence an individual’s mental well-being.

Community trainings vary in subject, including youth resiliency building, stress management, suicide prevention and trauma response. One of many examples is the Changing Our Mental and Emotional Trajectory (COMET) training, which teaches different approaches to check on a peer’s mental health beyond simply asking “how are you feeling?”Between all those initiatives, Elliot said their main focus is to reduce what she and Andrews said are the most common barriers to mental well-being in agriculture: isolation and stigma.

”Farmers and ranchers oftentimes are working by themselves, out in their tractor or behind a herd of cows all day, not talking to other people,” Elliot said. “They don’t oftentimes have someone to talk to, so they keep all that in, and it just eats away at them.”

“Mental health is a huge problem within agriculture… because of pride, because everybody knows your business before you do. So, getting over the stigma and getting help is a huge issue,” Andrews added. “AgrAbility has that resource.”

To learn more about AgrAbility or connect with any of its services, visit agrability.coloradostate. edu.

A herd of sheep seen grazing on a property in Fruita on Aug. 1. The sheep belong to Robert Andrews Jr., the owner of New Liberty Wool Pellet, a company Andrews started with the help of AgrAbility. The sheep are grazing 56 acres of invasive plants and fire fuel where the City of Fruita plans to construct a new boat ramp and recreational area, similar to the one at Las Colonias.

LARRY ROBINSON/ The Daily Sentinel

Robert Andrews Jr., owner and founder of New Liberty Wool Pellet, shows raw wool waiting to be transformed into wool pellets for agriculture in Mack on Aug. 1.

Robert Andrews Jr., owner and founder of New Liberty Wool Pellet, shows how his wool pellets react to water and how the pellets will release stored water and nutrients back into the soil when they are activated by moisture on Aug. 1.