ATU739 – Vets in Agriculture – AgrAbility and Other Programs with Joe Ricker, Darin Chapman and Hack Albertson (Part 2)

Hi, I’m Darin Chapman.

I am Joe Ricker.

I am Hack Albertson and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 739 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on July 25th, 2025. On today’s show, we’re excited for part two of our interview with Hack Albertson, Darin Chapman, and Joe Ricker talking about veterans in agriculture, AgrAbility, and other programs to help veterans and individuals with disabilities get into agriculture and farming. If you missed the first half of our episode, please go back and listen to episode 738 of Assistive Technology Update. It was released last week on July 18th. We’re also happy to be joined again by our friends at BridgingApps with an app worth mentioning.

Don’t forget, folks, if you’ve got something you’d like to tell us, a question, a comment or anything like that, please reach out. You can email us at Tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. But for now, folks, let’s go ahead and get on with the show. Folks, we cannot thank you enough for giving us a listen here at Assistive Technology Update. But did you know this is not the only podcast that we have? You can also check out our sister show Assistive Technology Frequently Ask Questions. This show comes out once a month and it features panelists, Belva Smith, Brian Norton, and myself as we try to answer the questions that are plaguing your mind about assistive technology. We gather up all the questions we get during the month from emails, phone calls, and many other means, and then we do our best to answer them.

But I got to tell you folks, believe it or not, we do not know everything, so we rely on our listeners a lot to reach out to us and give us some of those answers or maybe just talk about their personal experiences and things that have happened to them. So if you’d like Assistive Technology Update, you may very well love Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions. Again, it’s Assistive Technology Frequently Asked Questions where you can get your questions about assistive technology answered, or if you happen to have the answers to some of the questions asked on that show, please, please, please do reach out and let us know so that we can help the community with the answers that they so desperately seek. Much like Assistive Technology Update, you can find Assistive Technology Frequently Asked questions, wherever you prefer to get your podcast. And as always listeners, thank you for listening. Next up on the show, listeners, please join me in welcoming back BridgingApps with an app worth mentioning.

This is Ale Gonzalez with BridgingApps and this is an app worth mentioning. This week’s featured app is called Otter Transcribe Voice Notes. Otter records conversations on a phone, tablet, or web browser, and within minutes transforms the recording into a transcript with searchable notes, text, audio, and even images. These audio files and transcripts can be saved, exported, and shared with others. Otter is marketed as an efficient and accessible way to turn conversations into smart notes that are searchable. A reviewer used the free version of Otter to record and save a transcription, basically a written word-for-word document of two separate IEP meetings for their student with a disability. Their free version offers 300 minutes per month or five hours of recording and transcription. This amount of time was perfect for the purpose of documenting lengthy IEP meetings with multiple attendings.

A new feature, Otter Assistant makes this even easier as it can be said to automatically join meeting links from your calendar to take and share notes in real time. Additionally, the automated outline feature will make remembering key points easier as it provides you with a summary after your discussion that can be displayed as an outline. A favorite feature is that Siri shortcuts can be enabled to begin and end recordings hands-free using only one’s voice. Otter is currently available for both Android and iOS devices and is free to download. For more information on this app and others like it, visit bridgingapps.org

Listeners, we were not able to get our entire interview with Joe Ricker, Darin Chapman, and Hack Albertson into the show last week, so we’ll have a continuation of it here in just a moment. For those folks who didn’t listen last week, we ended with Joe Ricker talking about the toolbox available from AgrAbility and how it could help individuals find some different adaptive and amazing tools to help them in agriculture and maybe some other needs. We’re going to start off today by replaying just the introductions of our guests and then we’ll get straight into the rest of our interviews. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourselves? And Hack, we’ll just start with you because you’re first on my screen.

Thanks, Joe. I’m a Paralyzed Marine Corps veteran. I’ve been a paraplegic for 32 years and I have lots of interest and I’ve found throughout the years that there’s several organizations that are available to help you. Darin is with Hoosier Uplands and Hoosier Uplands has helped me in many ways to get vehicles, to get adaptive equipment, to help with the home. Operation Rebound is a veteran-oriented organization that will help get equipment, sporting equipment, and then I was introduced to Heroes to Hives through Joe Ricker who got me into beekeeping, and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. They helped me get the hives, the bees, and the educational part through Purdue to learn how to take care of those and get honey, which for personal consumption or for sale if need be. You can get as deep into it as I want or just to raise the bees-

Nice.

Which are amazing.

Awesome, awesome. Darin, what about you?

All right, well, I’m Darin Chapman and I’m the Indiana AgVets Coordinator at Hoosier Uplands Economic Development Corporation. I’m also a veteran. I’m an Air Force veteran and I took an interest in agriculture, so I’ve done a little bit of everything from raising pastured poultry, pastured hogs, I got into honey bees, fruit trees, and a large garden. And currently I’m doing some property management using EQIP grants from the NRCS. So I have a lot of interest as well, but one of my main interests is helping veterans and this job at Hoosier Uplands allows me to work with veterans that have an interest in either pursuing a career in agriculture or just pursuing their interest in agriculture. And agriculture is such a broad statement, not just corn and soybeans. We have cut flower producers, we have people raising honey bees, small chicken flocks, cattle. I’ve even met veterans that were harvesting salt water from the ocean and evaporating it down and selling gourmet sea salt and that’s also considered agriculture.

I would’ve never ever thought of that. That’s super cool. And Joe, last but not least, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, so my name is Joe Ricker. I retired from the army in June of 2022. Before that I was on a Department of Defense Skillbridge internship with AgrAbility. I had met them a couple of years prior through some of their programs for veterans that want to get into agriculture. So with AgrAbility, what we do there is we both help veterans that are beginning farmers or want to be beginning farmers and educate them and also we help people with, anybody with a disability that wants to continue a career in agriculture. Veterans is just the specific area that I as the veteran outreach coordinator focus on. I have about 200 apple trees on my property, about a dozen beehives and I think I have about nine goats as of today. So it’s fun to help veterans get into agriculture. Being a veteran myself and seeing them as I like to say, see the veterans grow and get some dirt therapy from getting their hands dirty just like Darin likes to see as well.

I guess this question’s kind of for everybody because Joe Hack, Darin, we’ve talked about a lot of different programs already. I guess if I’m a veteran or I know a veteran that might be interested in agriculture, is kind of looking for something, where would they start? There’s so many programs out there to help. Where’s a good place to just begin and make sure that you’re finding what you need?

Josh, the best thing is the internet and for me it’s Google search and that’s how I’ve found resources. And I meet veterans that didn’t realize they had VA benefits and that might be 100% rating and they were eligible for eight or $10,000 a month, a free home and a vehicle, and they’ve been 15 years injured and didn’t know they qualified for that. And only by finding all of these and there’s no magic website that gives you all of them, it may give you a few. So networking with other veterans and by Google search I scuba dive through an organization that did that. I go on hunting and fishing trips, you get free tickets to concerts. There’s all types of things that you have to find out about and register for. And if you just sit at home and don’t have a computer or anyone that uses it, you’re really shut out and missing out on it.

And I’m going to add to that. I think that’s great. Josh, let’s say you’re from a small town in Indiana and you’re the only paralyzed person in town, you don’t really have a lot of connection and a lot of people don’t know how to help or how to even steer you towards help. The one thing because I’ve worked more with veterans as well as Joe has, AgrAbility, the NTW, the National Training Workshop. It’s held once a year. I’ve met all kinds of farmers from all across the country, actually even the world. And every individual has a different challenge and some have multiple challenges. And I myself got out of the Air Force and didn’t look back for almost 20 years. And then I got reconnected with veterans and like Hack said, I started learning what was available for veterans, what was available for veterans who wanted to get into agriculture, which led me to Joe and then to Hoosier Uplands, Indiana AgVets program.

There’s a tremendous amount of programs that are specific for individual needs. So I’m with Hack, you got to do some research, but once you connect, like even Hack and I, we start talking and we find out there’s opportunities both of us didn’t know about and I’ll talk to Joe and there’s more opportunities I didn’t know about. So one thing that I like to do is go to these veteran conferences. We had Veterans in Farming Conference in January, early this year, and you get to connect with veterans and share what you know and share what the USDA has available, NRCS, different loan programs, farm services, things you didn’t even know were available and how maybe you can benefit as a veteran.

And so I just say community, community. Try to get as involved in these nonprofits or these programs for veterans or for farmers and just network, network with each other because there’s so much information out there. And just one quick thing, I know we talked about lists and everything for certain people with different challenges, but that toolbox also has very low tech items. People with arthritis, how to turn on a water spigot, how to carry a bucket if they have weak hand strength, as Joe said, ergonomic gardening tools, power gates, powered carts, things that you don’t even think of that you don’t even know you need that will simplify your life. So connecting with others, that to me is a great resource as well as Google.

Nice. Joe, do you have any to add?

Yeah, so Josh, I usually start with a phone call. I’m on the agrability.org website as well as help manage two of the nonprofits and connected there. And usually if I get a veteran that says, “Hey, I want to be a farmer,” I will tell them, set up a time and call them and talk to them. And I’m sure like Darin does as well and try to hear their story because there is certainly a plethora of stories out there for veterans that have different needs or different desires in farming. Some will say, “Hey, I want to learn how to fly a drone because I flew a drone in Iraq.” Or you’ll get somebody who says, “Hey, I just want a homestead and make enough money so people leave me alone and I can feed my family.” So I’ll hear their story and then try to steer them to what I think would be applicable resources.

But again, they’re always able to like Hack and Darin said, look at the internet. Some of those resources go to Darin because we got a great program here in Indiana under Hoosier Uplands, the AgVet program. And we also have some great nonprofits as well. Maybe Darin can expound on the AgVet program a little bit. And then we also do Boots to Business planning. So if somebody says, “Hey, I’m a veteran, I want to be a farmer and I really want to get into doing a business in farmer’s markets and food safety,” we can connect them with all the resources out of Purdue and then connect them with some of the veteran benefits like Boots to Business, which is a program that’s managed by the Small Business Administration that helps veterans do business planning. It’s not just particular for farming, it’s for all areas of entrepreneurship, but it does have a particular one for farmers and ranchers where it helps provide resources and other things. But that Hoosier Uplands and what Darin does with the AgVet grant is pretty awesome tool as well.

Yeah, definitely. Darin, do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Sure. The AgVet grant is a grant through the USDA and NIFA, and I think we got our first grant money in 2019 at Hoosier Uplands. The AgVet program is a training and certification program. So we take veterans that have an interest and they’re veterans. They could be active duty, they could be garden reservists, but if they have an interest in agriculture, we will mentor them, come up with a plan, we’ll pay for training and certification. As Joe had mentioned, some want to get a CDL, commercial driver’s license and work for the big farms. Some want to get an organic certification and work on getting some land certified organic. We pay for those certifications, we have money to pay for that training. And we also, maybe somebody has zero experience on a farm. We have some online training, OSHA training that gives them a background in farm safety.

We use an OSHA training. We also have a gearing up for safety program that Purdue came up with. It’s won lots of awards. It’s great for anybody getting into ag. And then the culmination of our program is we have a paid internship. So we’ll get a veteran that has an interest in let’s just say cattle, and we’ll find a host farm in their area that’s willing to take the veteran on and mentor them and train them. And then we pay for that training. We pay that veteran a stipend or basically an internship of $15 an hour for up to 400 hours. So it’s kind of a win-win situation for the farm or the ag business and it’s a great way for the veteran to get some experience in the industry.

That’s awesome. And then Hack, I know you said you were a peer mentor for, was it The Christopher & Dana Reeves Foundation?

Yes.

Can you tell us a little bit about kind of what all you do as a peer mentor there?

The Reeves Foundation peer mentoring program, we have a large group of peer mentors that we try to demographically tie a peer mentor to the veteran or, and it doesn’t have to be veteran, civilian and their injury. So all the age groups, all the interest, sporting interest, outdoor interest or even no interest. And we start with that person right after injury as soon as they expressed an interest and they can find that online again, back to the internet. But then it’s all types of resources and your peer mentor will share with you and it’s trying to be an inspirational thing to help you find those resources like we’re talking about and match them to your interest. But it also is for the family, the caregiver, and a full facet of support for that person, not just for the day but for the rest of their life. There’s as much help or as little help as that person might want.

Nice.

And we also help in crisis situations too, to help them get the resources to get a person through that.

Nice. That is awesome. Well, if anything listeners, you can definitely take that there are just a lot of programs out there to assist with kind of from just the very beginning, maybe deciding what it is that you’d like to do to all the way through to putting things in place, the training and everything else. And just such a amazing kind of network of individuals and of programs to be able to really and truly assist people. For our listeners, and I know they can just Google things, but if they want to get directly to kind of one of the websites or reach out kind of directly. And I guess Joe, I’ll start with you for this one, for folks who maybe want to learn more about AgrAbility or the other programs we’ve talked about, what’s a good way for them to do that?

So they can sign up for the non-profit Veterans in Farming or Vets in Farming at Vetsinfarming.com that provides, we do a weekly or a monthly newsletter there of about 1600 veterans in the state of Indiana signed up there. And that really allows us to communicate. For AgrAbility, it would be agrability.org, A-G-R-A-B-I-L-I-T-Y.org. Or I take so many phone calls, I’m happy to help anybody. My number’s (262) 388-1261 and happy to take a call or get anybody sent in the right direction to be successful.

And Darin, what about for Hoosier Uplands and some of the other things we talked about?

Yes. If anybody’s interested in the Indiana AgVet program, they can email me at Dchapman@hoosieruplands.org. If they want to go online and look up some information about the Indiana AgVets program, they can go to www.indianaagvets.info and they might also see a gentleman’s name, Ed Sheldon. He’s my counterpart at Purdue AgrAbility. So Ed and I are helping veterans in the Indiana AgVet program and my phone number is, as well as Joe, you can reach out to me and we can try to talk and try to connect you as best we can is (812) 878-0733.

Awesome. And then Hack if folks who are interested in kind of maybe the peer mentorship program or anything like that with the Reeves Foundation, what’s a good way for them to find out more about that?

Of course you can find it on the internet at Christopher & Dana Reeves Foundation, and that’s a nationwide and even international outreach. I’m always available at (202) 596-0111. But Hoosier Uplands, as Darin’s talked about, and Indiana Voc Rehab, Indiana Vocational Rehab, all the acronyms start to run together and it’s-

Yeah, they do.

I always take for granted, everybody knows what I’m saying, but I know they don’t.

I do that all the time, especially with VR because people are like, “Oh, virtual reality.” I’m like, “Nope, totally, totally different thing.”

But if it’s a veteran needing help with benefits, any of the veteran service organizations paralyzed veterans, VFW, Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, the Marine Corps League or AMVETS, have service officers and you can search and find those easily or again, reach out to me. And in Indiana, every county has a Veterans Affairs service officer to help veterans get those resources they need.

Hey Josh, I think we also might’ve forgot to mention Easterseals and we mentioned voc rehab and we mentioned a lot of good programs, but Hack, you have a little more experience with Easterseals than I do.

Right. And Darin and I spoke because I wanted to make sure I was on topic today, but Easterseals, I’ve taken part in some of their programs and I actually go on a deer hunt at the Lakeshore Foundation, which is another great organization down in Birmingham, Alabama, and they help a lot with sporting stuff that, and Easterseals is really involved there. I’ve been at the camp and it’s amazing and I actually believe Easterseals will help with everything we’ve talked about today.

And if we’re not able to, because I mean there’s affiliate definitely close to you wherever you are here if you’re over here in the States and usually if we can’t help, hopefully we know who can through the network of different folks that we’re lucky enough to be partners with, be a part of or have learned of and be able to hopefully get you what you need and turn you on to some different things like the hunting trips and other stuff like that.

And with recreational therapy and the sports, I’m going there end of July for a bocce ball national tournament. It’s the 10-year anniversary and that’ll be at Lakeshore and the Easterseals rec therapist I’ve been involved with before, so.

Awesome.

Thanks a lot, Josh.

Awesome. And thank you guys again. I really do appreciate you taking time out of the day and just awesome programs. Always love to learn more about it. And these are some of my favorite interviews because I swear I learned at least three things I didn’t even know about. So that’s always good that I can pass that on. So thanks again, guys.

Well, thank you Josh.

Thank you, Josh.

Thanks for having us.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @Indataproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com. Special thanks to Nicole Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.