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Roses for Autism:

US (CT): How a farm was saved and a vital need filled

In the fall of 2008, Tom Pinchbeck announced he would be closing his family’s rose farm in Guilford, Connecticut, which had been operating for nearly 80 years. It had been a slow decline for the business due to competition from imported roses from Central and South America, and Equatorial Africa, where they don’t have to spend money on heating greenhouses and where labor is cheap.

“The rose industry was moving off shore. It had been happening for a long time, but it got to the point where we couldn’t compete with the price of imported roses,” recalls Pinchbeck. The farm was started by his great grandfather and grandfather back in 1929, and was one of the last hold-outs in a town that once boasted more than 100 working farms.

Pinchbeck says an old college friend with a son on the autism spectrum asked him if he could pitch the idea around of using the farm for vocational training after learning of Pinchbeck’s plans to shutter the business. “That’s how it all got started,” says Pinchbeck.

Click here to read the complete article at modernfarmer.com.
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