We saw a need in the community and worked hard to resolve it.
In April 2015, Howe resident Margaret Malone read an article in the News Sun called The Hidden Face of Meth. It told the heart-wrenching story of how children of methamphetamine addicts live in squalid conditions and then are passed into the system of child services after their parents are arrested. She was shaken by this and decided to do something about it.
Marge is one of the founding members of the Ark Animal Rescue and Adoption, a no-kill animal sanctuary located in LaGrange, Indiana. She felt that animals could have a healing effect on traumatized children, and that if the community child care and health care professionals had a safe, neutral place to bring these children where they could get counseling, supervision, and care in a farm-like setting, it could go a long way toward their emotional healing.
With this in mind, she formed a committee to explore the idea. Before long she had a group of county officials, church leaders, foster parents, and other concerned citizens working with mental health counselors and child services advocates. They put together the idea of The Farm, where these children could spend time after losing their parents to incarceration.
Since 2016 the group has raised funds through grants, dinners, sales of t-shirts and bricks, fundraisers by children, churches, local businesses, corporations, individuals, chicken BBQs, and miscellaneous other sources.
The Farm Place purchased 10 acres on SR 9 north of LaGrange, and has built a 3,500-square-foot multi-story residence that has been leased to a licensed foster family. Since 2020, the first year the home was occupied, more than 40 children have passed through its doors.
An auction and dinner in August 2019 raised over $50,000 to build a barn with counseling rooms and office space on the property, where supervised visitations and skills training will take place, board meetings will be held, and a variety of animals will be housed. As needs require, a multipurpose building may be built in the future as the last of the buildings proposed for The Farm Place.
