Naomi King, a Unitarian Universalist minister and daughter of authors Tabitha and Stephen King, moved to Sweden, Maine in 2012 to be closer to her family after her rare muscular disorder started to advance. King, who uses a wheelchair, took the management job at the family-owned farm business.<\/p>\n
By February 2013, the challenges of managing a successful, growing mid-size farm began to take a toll.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was at the point where I could not work at all here anymore,\u201d King says.<\/p>\n
Then King discovered a reference to the National AgrAbility Project online. When she learned there was a Maine program, King contacted Maine AgrAbility Project Coordinator Lani Carlson to determine if the program would apply to her.<\/p>\n
Maine AgrAbility, a USDA grant-funded state program helps farmers with chronic health conditions and disabilities gain more control of their lives, continue to farm successfully and live independently. The Maine AgrAbility program is a nonprofit collaboration of University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Goodwill Industries of Northern New England and Alpha One.<\/p>\n
Since receiving USDA funding in 2010, Maine AgrAbility has assisted more than 160 Maine farmers who have disabilities by offering services that range from answering agricultural questions, to suggesting ways to adapt tools or work sites, to referring farmers to other local support agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was tremendously discouraged and convinced I couldn\u2019t do anything related to the farm anymore,\u201d King says. \u201cSo to be able to come to work six days a week is invaluable to me. It gives me a lot of purpose.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Naomi King, a Unitarian Universalist minister and daughter of authors Tabitha and Stephen King, moved to Sweden, Maine in 2012 to be closer to her family after her rare muscular disorder started to advance. King, who uses a wheelchair, took the management job at the family-owned farm business. By February 2013, the challenges of managing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":5,"label":"News"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/author\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":5,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"News about AgrAbility","parent":0,"count":258,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":5,"category_count":258,"category_description":"News about AgrAbility","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5506,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions\/5506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extension.umaine.edu\/agrability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}