Zionsville organization helps adults with disabilities find work

For three years, Max Richey has gone to work at a greenhouse in Zionsville where he plants, grows and picks vegetables that find their way to people’s dinner plates across the Boone County town.

Richey works at Watch Us Farm, a nonprofit with an ambitious plan to grow and develop its program that provides job training and employment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Alongside his co-workers, Richey spends his workdays in a 7,000-square-foot greenhouse at 9906 E. County Road 200 South tending to lettuce, arugula, broccoli, bok choy, and other vegetables and microgreens that are grown using hydroponic gardening, with plants nurtured by a water-based nutrient solution rather than soil.

When produce is ready, it is sold at Zionsville restaurants, offered at farmers markets and provided to food pantries.

“You get to walk around, instead of just sitting down,” Richey said. “You do a lot of good work.”

Watch Us Farm is the brainchild of Janice Agarwal, who founded the organization in 2018 with her husband, David, on the 14-acre property they own west of U.S. 421 on the rural north side of Zionsville.

Soon, Watch Us Farm could expand, thanks in part to land donated by Henke Development Group and a grant from the Indiana University Health Foundation.

Agarwal, who worked as a pediatric physical therapist before devoting her time to Watch Us Farm, is particularly dedicated to her work because the Agarwals’ son Alex has an intellectual disability. She said being a parent of an adult with a disability has made her aware of the roadblocks families encounter when it comes to finding work for people like Alex.

She also oversees operations at a shop in downtown Zionsville called Watch Us Weave, at 45 S. Elm St., where workers learn fiber arts and create hand-woven blankets, towels, rugs, place mats and table runners. Most of the employees who work at Watch Us Farm and Watch Us Weave are in their 20s and 30s.

Examples of intellectual and developmental disabilities include autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome.

“We just want to look at the full spectrum of a person and see them as a real person, all parts of it,” Agarwal said.

Before settling in Zionsville, she and her husband spent time living in Europe where long-established programs aided by companies, such as German-based manufacturers Audi and Miele, provide training, employment and housing options for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. But she said families struggle in the United States, which doesn’t have strong support infrastructure for people with intellectual disabilities.

“We are modeling this off of many of the different programs that are out in Europe that have been around for three and four generations,” Agarwal said. “This is a model program. It’s just our beginning.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 6.5 million people in this country have an intellectual disability. The unemployment rate for people with an intellectual disability last year was about 18%, compared with the overall unemployment rate of 7.5% for people with any disability. The unemployment rate for all adults of working age was 3.8%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Agarwal said many of her employees excelled in school but were left without options and funding once they graduated. In school, students who have a disability have what is called an individualized education program that ensures they receive specialized instruction and services.

“We can take the smartest people in the world, but they may not be able to keep a job if they don’t know how to work and they don’t know how to relate to people,” she said. “The hardest part is, you speak with a lot of the companies, and they’re like, ‘We want to hire them, but what happens when something goes wrong?’”

Dave Ellison, who taught special education for 30 years at Ben Davis High School, is now director of vocational training at Watch Us Farm. He said potential employees who come to Watch Us Farm first have a trial period during which he works with them to find their strengths and how the organization can adapt to them. Some workers might start at the greenhouse and move to Watch Us Weave, or vice versa, if their interests and skill sets match one location better than the other.

“If you feel valued, then your sense of purpose grows,” Ellison said. “And I think that makes them blossom because I think, a lot of times, people have looked down on people with intellectual disabilities. They’re kind of the hidden people. You walk down the street, you wouldn’t know that they had some kind of intellectual disability. I just think that [their] working and being in an environment that’s safe and friendly and accommodating makes them thrive.”

Building a future

Now that Watch Us Farm has an established program in Zionsville, Agarwal is preparing for the future.

The first big step happened last year when Zionsville-based Henke Development Group donated 25 acres to the organization for its future campus. The property is part of a larger project called Maple Lane Club of Bradley Ridge that Henke Development is planning on about 182 acres east of the intersection of U.S. 421 and East County Road 200 South.

“We couldn’t think about expanding until that happened,” Agarwal said. “We now actually have a real home.”

Along with Watch Us Farm, plans for Maple Lane Club of Bradley Ridge call for 360 houses, an amenity area and walking trails, according to documents submitted to the town of Zionsville.

Members of the Zionsville Plan Commission are expected to review Henke Development’s plan for the first time on Sept. 15. The project is a continuation of the development company’s Bradley Ridge project on the west side of U.S. 421 that received approval last year.

If it is developed according to current plans, Watch Us Farm’s campus would feature a central hub building where people would receive vocational training, career development and workshops; 24 housing units for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities; up to eight greenhouses; an agritourism area with orchards; walking paths, athletic fields and a multipurpose event center.

At the new campus, Watch Us Farm would be able to broaden its vocational training programs to encompass training in food production, culinary arts, hospitality services, textiles, electronics and landscape management. The program would initially serve about 100 participants.

Along with vocational training programs, the campus would host internship programs for college and graduate students specializing in greenhouse management, special education, business administration and the arts.

“When you’re coming out of high school, you want to go to the food industry, the hospitality industry, or electronics or more vocational stuff—we’re going to inculcate that into our program so that our community feels like anybody can come to this,” Agarwal said.

Betsy Henke Garfield, who directs development, finances and acquisitions for Henke Development, said she and her family began talking with Agarwal about six years ago about finding space for Watch Us Farm at one of their future developments.

“We were just like, ‘You don’t have a spot yet, but you will. We’re going to find a spot because this is so neat,’” she said. “I think it was just one of those long-term things that we knew we would find a way to make happen, and it’s been really cool to be able to embark on that now.”

Henke Garfield added that Henke Development plans to integrate Watch Us Farm into Maple Lane Club of Bradley Ridge so that future residents will feel encouraged to support it and volunteer.

“It’s just really different than any other real estate project that we’ve done,” she said. “And because it’s in a community where people will want to have a hand and want to help out, I think that’s going to make it even more even more successful in the end.”

Making it work

For Agarwal, now that she has a spot for Watch Us Farm’s future home, she is focused on fundraising to make it a reality.

She needs $8 million to construct the central hub building, she said, and has $3 million on hand. A large fundraising event is planned for Sept. 27 at Watch Us Farm’s future site.

The organization also received a $500,000 grant in December from Indiana University Health Foundation’s Community Impact Investment Fund. The IU Health Foundation uses the fund to provide resources to organizations that address social and environmental factors that impact people’s health outcomes.

Agarwal is also in the early stages of working with Purdue University’s landscape architecture program on its new campus. In time, Purdue students could help design Watch Us Farm’s greenhouse buildings, but those plans are not finalized.

“They love the idea, but like everybody else, they want to see it start happening, and as it happens, we are going to be drawing them in,” she said.

Erin Percevault, an assistant professor who specializes in horticulture and landscape architecture in Purdue’s College of Agriculture, said Watch Us Farm’s approach to growing food aligns with the university’s One Health initiative, which looks to tackle challenges that intersect within human, animal and plant health.

“I think the fact that they acknowledge there is both the need for food and for education and to connect community and to have really a special place for people is very, very important,” Percevault said.

Ultimately, Agarwal wants to replicate Watch Us Farm in other parts of central Indiana, and she hopes other people pick up the concept she developed here and expand it in other states. People in California, Ohio and Utah have talked with her about starting their own programs.

“Everyone’s going to be different, and every organization that gets built from this is going to look different, and that’s what we want,” she said. “If you had said 10 years ago that this is my future, I would’ve gone, ‘No. With me running this? No.’ But if I don’t do it, who’s going to? That’s why I get up every morning.”•