#GiveLocal: 5 Questions with Leg Up Farm

Leg Up Farm is the Lemon Street Market #GiveLocal partner organization for March and April. When customers opt to round up at the register, all proceeds will be donated to Leg Up Farm in order to support this non-profit therapy center for children with special needs. We spoke with Jen Hitz, Chief Development Officer, about some ongoing and upcoming projects.

What inspired the mission of Leg Up Farm?

Leg Up Farm was the vision of a local couple named Louie and Laurie Castriota. They wanted to create a therapeutic riding program for children with special needs. Ironically, about 6 months after they really started to put their vision to paper, they found out that their daughter, Brooke, had a genetic disorder called mitochondria disease. Their experiences in searching for the best treatment and therapy services for Brooke made them realize how fragmented and uncoordinated services are for families with special needs children. It was at that point that they decided to, literally, blow the top off their vision and create the ultimate therapy center for children impacted by special needs.

Why is it important to provide a variety of services and programs all under one roof?

Because services are often spread out and disconnected, families are going one place for physical therapy, another for occupation therapy, etc. As such, they may be forced to appointments 3-4 nights a week to various points in the community, sometimes more than an hour away from home. By having everything beneath one roof, schedules can be accommodated to include multiple therapies in one night and, because the therapists all know one another and are communicating with each other regularly, we can ensure that things are not being duplicated or missed.

Tell a favorite story of how an individual or family’s life has been impacted by your services.

Cami started coming to Leg Up Farm in 2011. At that time, she was 10 years old and had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which is on the autism spectrum. Specifically, she was struggling with anger management and anxiety issues and was utilizing Leg Up Farm’s behavioral health services. Shortly after starting her therapy, Cami’s parents realized that she might also benefit from Leg Up Farm’s therapeutic riding program, as they thought it would help build her self-confidence as well as her endurance.

For the next several years, things were going well for Cami. She no longer came to Leg Up Farm for behavioral health but continued with riding, even joining Leg Up Farm’s horse show team. She had also joined her school’s swim team, learned to play the viola, loved math class and reading novels.

Then, things started to change. She began experiencing headaches as well as coordination and muscle tone issues. Shortly thereafter, she began to have seizure-like episodes. Cami’s doctors could not find the cause of these issues. All they could say was that she had an “undiagnosed disorder of the brain”. Unfortunately, one of these episodes was so severe, that Cami went into respiratory arrest. She almost died and for nearly a month, we didn’t know if she’d make it. As she started to come out of this condition, she found that she could no longer walk, had difficulty speaking and, for a girl who loved math, couldn’t even count single digit numbers. After being in the hospital for months on end, she was finally released.

Upon returning home, her family enrolled her back into Leg Up Farm services, but this time, it wasn’t for therapeutic riding. Instead, weekly, she was receiving a medley of physical, occupational, and speech therapy services. With the added benefit of having all her therapists working together beneath one roof, Cami started to get back to her old self. She rejoined the swim team and was taking pre-algebra. Through all of this, her doctor’s remained stumped as to the cause of her episodes and she continued to have about one per month. She had one in the pool, in gym class… because of the nature of these episodes, it was deemed unsafe for her to continue certain activities at school. She was no longer allowed to be on the swim team or in gym class and a shortened school day was constructed for her academics.

Cami was crushed. She had worked so hard and just wanted a sense of normalcy again. Fortunately, Leg Up Farm’s riding instructors and horses are well trained in handling all types of situations, including working with children who experience seizures. With this in mind, Cami reconnected with riding and within 8 months was back on the horse show team. She bonded almost immediately with her new horse, Sam. In fact, she often equated her situation to the movie the Karate Kid… she came back fighting… and affectionately called Sam “Samualson” – like Mr. Miyagi called Daniel “Danielson”. In their last show of the 2016 season, Cami and Sam even competed in a jumping class!

With many questions still left unanswered, one thing is for certain, Leg Up Farm helped Cami to not only regain her speech, movement and freedom, but also a sense of normalcy.

Can you share more about the Leg Up Farmers Market?

Leg Up Farmers Market is a separate entity of the Leg Up Farm Family. It is a for profit venture with private investors. Its mission is to provide a full-service, natural foods grocery store that supports the Leg Up Farm Family of nonprofit entities. This is achieved by having the therapy center own a portion of the shares of the market. A portion of the net profits from the store help to support the therapy efforts of the organization. Further, Leg Up Farmers Market is determined to promote local producers and distributors so as to help grow the profitability of local farmers and small business owners.

What are some of Leg Up Farm’s upcoming events?

Below is our 2019 event schedule:

– The Mudfest Series (a 3-part 5k trail run series; runner may run 1, 2, or all 3 races)
– Give Local York:  5/3, all day online giving event (24 hours)
– Farm en Blanc:  5/18, 5pm
– Car and Cycle Show:  6/22, 9am-2pm
– Clash of the Clubs:  8/9, 8am
– Fall Fest:  10/12, 10am-3pm

Learn more about Lemon Street Market’s #GiveLocal campaign

Jen Hitz
Chief Development Offier
Leg Up Farm

Coming up next: Our May & June #GiveLocal partner organization is the Lancaster Family YMCA.