Care farming

Care farming is the use of farming practices for the stated purpose of providing or promoting healing, mental health, social, or educational care services. Care farms may provide supervised, structured programs of farming-related activities, including animal husbandry, crop and vegetable production and woodland management. Some farms attempt to alleviate the effects of the unrecognized medical condition nature deficit disorder. It has been remarked, that the maniacs of the male sex in all hospitals, who assist in cutting wood, making fires, and digging in a garden, and the females who are employed in washing, ironing, and scrubbing floors, often recover, while persons, whose rank exempts them from performing such services, languish away their lives within the walls of the hospital. Care farming is the use of farming practices for the stated purpose of providing or promoting healing, mental health, social, or educational care services. Care farms may provide supervised, structured programs of farming-related activities, including animal husbandry, crop and vegetable production and woodland management. Some farms attempt to alleviate the effects of the unrecognized medical condition nature deficit disorder. Recently, agricultural multifunctionality has given a boost to the development of care farming. Benjamin Rush (1746–1813) is said to be one of the first medical scientists referring to the positive effects of the practice of horticultural therapy on the well-being of mentally diseased. Rush published 5 books in a series of Medical Inquiries and Observations, the last being concerned with The Diseases of The Mind (1812). In this volume, the practice of horticulture is mentioned twice.