OUR COMMITMENT TO UKRAINE

In the Spring of 2022, the Slack Farms Foundation made a decision to support Ukrainian students in the U.S. who could not return home for the holidays. Many Ukrainian students now come to our farms for their academic holidays. Three will join us this Thanksgiving and several more for Christmas.

At our farms they learn farm skills as interns, and I listen as they talk openly about their good fortune to be in school in America.

They are extraordinarily gifted students and grateful for the oasis they find here. They weigh their own futures against those of their families and friends back home, besieged daily by Russia’s futile war against them.

Words instruct us, like those of my college history teacher who advised, “No, history does not repeat itself” and she offered many examples. Today I think some of America’s history a hundred years ago is recurring, but then a picture comes to mind of Artem in the gardens this summer — and this simply could not have been a century ago.

Artem Tartakovskyi is our 2025 Slack Farms Fellow and he will be here again at Thanksgiving. Those are loping sheers slung over his shoulder, where there might otherwise be a gun. Artem is a computer science and physics major at W&L. This summer he helped us lead six weeks of farm skills training for 7 Austrian and 2 Ukrainian interns.

Our Advisory Board has just welcomed Artem to join and advise us. His bio, and theirs, is here.

Please consider a gift to help us make possible these experiences of farms and friendship. Each of these interns believe Ukraine’s future is promising, and I know their experiences now will redound to their country’s strongest outcome from war.

Warmly,

Jim Grube
Slack Farms Foundation
Jim@slackfarmsfoundation.org