“Modern Farmer” January 17, 2018

“Hope for Heroes: How Farming Is Helping Veterans Find Purpose” by Jeff Chu

When the Gulf War erupted in 1990, John Bauman shipped off to Kuwait. Then a hopeful 25-year-old from the Chicago suburbs, he’d joined the Navy a year before, in peacetime, to pay for college. Instead, Bauman received a different kind of education. As he watched hundreds of oil wells ablaze, transforming the emirate into a constant gloaming of smoke and ash, the aspiring engineer realized he’d never seek a career in the lucrative petroleum industry. “I saw Kuwait on fire,” Bauman says. “I saw how this ends.”

Four years later, he left the Navy and earned a mechanical engineering degree. But after being laid off from a water-pump company in 2005, Bauman bounced through a string of temp jobs, all the while battling what he calls “untreated rage.” For a spell, he was homeless. Finally, in 2013, Bauman landed in Denver, where he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and a caseworker suggested the local agricultural-training program Veterans to Farmers.

Bauman, 52, now juggles part-time gigs at three area farms: Rebel Farm, CityGal Farms, and Sprout City Farms. He earns $9 an hour – hardly a living, yet enough to fuel his dreams. “I’d like to have my own greenhouse someday,” he says. “I’d like to grow food for friends and family, for people who can’t provide for themselves.”