Dairy Therapy

An organic farm provides counseling, chores, and a chemical-free haven to recovering addicts

Organic farms shun artificial chemicals — a perfect setting for drug addicts and

alcoholics who want to be chemical-free as well, says James W. Kehoe.

Mr. Kehoe, manager of a charity-owned dairy on 315 acres an hour north of San Francisco, says organic farming “mirrors the program, the clean-and-sober issues.”

Mr. Kehoe delegates chores to 40 or so residents who — between counseling sessions — milk cows, feed 600 head of cattle, and clean barns. He says the labor, done in exchange for treatment, can be therapeutic.

But the dairy is also a commercial operation, and the St. Anthony Foundation, a homeless shelter and clinic in San Francisco that runs the farm, has found that its charitable mission and its business interests dovetail nicely.

The organic label on the milk — 780,000 hormone-free gallons per year — means it fetches premium prices in Bay Area grocery stores.

“Organic milk turned out to be twice as valuable” as standard milk, says Cathleen M. Moller, operations manager at the farm. St. Anthony grosses $1.5-million annually from sales; yearly profits, which support the charity’s general budget, can reach $400,000.

A high return on products is essential because the resident farmhands pay no fees, and St. Anthony accepts only the very poorest, Ms. Moller says.

“People that can afford to go to [fee-based] programs should go to those other programs,” she says.

Connection to Animals

But being organic has additional benefits. Officials say workers’ contact with animals, more intimate on organic farms than on industrial farms, supplements the counseling.

Cattle “come to rely on people, give the people something to take care of,” says Mr. Kehoe. After six months of rehabilitation, “a lot of [participants] would like to stay and stay connected with the animals.”

The dropout rate for workers is around 25 percent, Mr. Kehoe estimates, low considering how entrenched addiction can be among the population the foundation serves.

But the program is working to improve that percentage. It recently made the decision, for example, to serve only men after concluding that combining the sexes interfered with people’s recoveries.

“Men and women do better in a gender-specific environment,” says Ms. Moller. When mixed, she says, “it’s human nature — they lose focus.” (Since its inception in 1993, the program has always served more men than women.)

In another change, the farm will soon begin generating products from raw milk, starting with “European butter,” a higher-fat version of the standard kind (87 percent versus 83 percent).

As with organic milk, the richer butter is uncommon, and dairy managers think they can make money in a niche market. They also plan to sell produce from an organic garden and a grove of fruit trees on the farm, which previously produced food only for residents.

Though the St. Anthony Foundation, which is operated by Franciscan friars, generally accepts no federal money out of concerns about the mixing of government and religion, it does accept one-time government grants for projects such as the pond it recently dug on its farm.

The charity plans to use the water to generate fuel, by pumping methane-rich manure into the pond and capturing gases that bubble up. The fuel can then be recycled to churn butter or for other tasks.

“We’re a nonprofit, so we’re looking to increase our income and become a little more self-sufficient,” says Ms. Moller.

The farm will be more self-contained, less bothered by the outside world — exactly what its drug and alcohol patients wanted in the first place.