Within months of joining the U.S. Marine Corps, Colin Archipley was headed to war. “He went right from bootcamp to Iraq,” spending seven months on the front lines, says his wife Karen, referring to the 2003 US-led military invasion. After a half-year return to Camp Pendleton near San Diego, he repeated the cycle twice: a deployment to Fallujah followed by a brief reprieve back in California, and then a final tour in Haditha, just as Iraq’s western province became a hotspot.
Suffering from severe post-traumatic stress, Archipley was ready to retire after his four-year enlistment. “You don’t come back without damage from that,” says Karen. Yet checking out of the armed forces, the couple came to find, was a shockingly abrupt procedure with scant support. At that time, the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Transition Assistance Program, which was developed in 1991 to smooth the shift from active duty to civilian life, extended just four days. “It was harsh,” she says. They were left to navigate a lot on their own, including finding doctors familiar with combat-related conditions while trying to secure appointments at the Veterans Administration—on top of figuring out Archipley’s next career step.
Fortunately, the couple had invested in a 2.5-acre farm in Escondido, near Camp Pendleton, in between tours. “Farming turned out to be really healing,” says Karen, allowing her husband to decompress outdoors through physically demanding but rewarding challenges. After ending his service in 2006, Archipley and his wife established Archi’s Acres, an organic hydroponic farm that supplies basil and other specialty crops to local restaurants and stores.
Read more at modernfarmer.com