The Self-sufficient Farm and the Activity Program

Suzanne McMinn had the dream of moving to a farm, back to her roots in the hills of West Virginia.  She wanted to try her hand at being self-sufficient and living off the land and wrote about her adventures in the book, “Chickens in the Road.”  Do you think she had an adventure?  Yeah-yuh!  A lot of the adventure involved discovering (too late) that things done piecemeal tend to involve more work than they need to, and that she couldn’t do it all.  

McMinn built a farmhouse on the side of a hill and found that doing some of the chores was downright inconvenient just because of where things were located. She began collecting animals, chickens, then goats, sheep, dogs, cats, donkeys, pigs, and cows.  They were all good farm animals, but her farm was too small and poorly set up to maintain them efficiently.  The goats were cute but didn’t produce milk like she’d expected.  The ram terrorized her.  The cow produced milk, but kept getting out of her pen.  Water had to be carried by the bucket.  Gates wouldn’t open. The road was almost unusable in winter.  In short, McMinn was killing herself trying to keep it all going and not getting the returns she hoped for. 

How about our activity programs?  Do we have the big picture of what each part is for and whether it is actually doing it or not?  Is a lot of our energy going toward relatively few residents?  Have we figured out how to use our EHR (computer software) to help evaluate our activities and identify residents in need?  Are our materials organized in a way that promotes their use?  Is our budget going toward one area, while there are real needs in another?  In short, are we killing ourselves trying to do everything in front of us, things that might not even be the best choices to begin with?

It’s about balance.  There are all sorts of activities that we can add to our programs.  McMinn kept adding animals, whether or not she had a good plan for how they fit in.  Eventually, she learned to ask some hard questions about what she was trying to accomplish and which animals would help her do it.  What kind of goats?  How many cows?  She learned to weigh their merits, identifying the ones that fit her needs, culling the ones that didn’t.  In the end, she felt happier and more empowered.  Time is limited and planning takes more of that time.  But having a plan is worth it.

© Donna Stuart, March 7, 2014*

McMinn, Suzanne. Chickens in the Road. New York: Harper One, 2013.

This article first appeared on the Metrolina Activity Professionals Association Facebook page on 3/8/2014.