Foster children learn about life on the farm

Throughout the day Monday, a group of foster children got to experience life on the farm, whether it meant learning to make ice cream from scratch or distinguishing between types of dairy cattle.

Called Foster Creek Farm Camp, the learning experience continues Tuesday with lessons on growing wheat and how bread and other wheat-based products make their way to tables near and far.

Laura Nothdurft, a former agriculture teacher in Jackson who helps run a farm with her husband, Jeremie, came up with the idea for the inaugural event because of her interest in foster children's issues.

Although the Nothdurfts aren't in a position to become foster parents, they wanted to find another way to help make life a little easier for children in difficult circumstances.

So the camp became part therapy, part learning experience and definitely out of the norm for most children who attended.

Josh Walther explains the difference between beef and dairy cows Monday during the Foster Creek Farm Camp at his family farm in Jackson. (Glenn Landberg)

"We mainly felt an urge to help these children in the midst of great struggle, and we wanted to use our farm as a way for them to relax, but also accomplish another passion of ours, which is educating an increasingly separated public about farm life and food production," Nothdurft wrote in an earlier email to the Southeast Missourian.

Crissy Mayberry, executive director of the not-for-profit Hope Children's Home in Jackson, the participating group, said when Nothdurft contacted her with the idea, "it sounded pretty amazing."

"(The children have) really been looking forward to it," she said.

Although circumstances vary, most of the 13 children who live in the home came to be there because of traumatic events within their families or because their parents died and they had no one else to care for them. The children range in age from 6 to 19.

"All of the children are placed in our care by the Missouri Children's Division," Mayberry said.

She said Hope Children's Home, a large family home run by a family that does outreach and foster recruitment, is an environment in short supply locally.

"There are only 30 licensed foster families in our three-county area, and most of those homes are at capacity," she said.

Although Hope Children's Home is licensed to care for 12 children at a time, with allowances made for sibling groups, an average foster home can only have up to six children, including biological children.

Lauren Masterson, children's service supervisor for Missouri's District 32, which includes Cape, Bollinger and Perry counties, said, according to the most recent information from the state Department of Social Services, the area has 279 children in foster care. In District 33, which includes Scott and Mississippi counties, 130 children are being fostered.

ljones@semissourian.com

388-3652

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Number of foster children in Cape, Bollinger and Perry counties (32nd Circuit): 279

Number in Scott and Mississippi counties (33rd Circuit): 130

Information provided by Lauren Masterson, 32nd Circuit Children*'s Division supervisor, Missouri Department of Social Services