Vets turn to gardening.

• Author: Webster, Stephen C.

STEVEN ACHESON SPENT nearly five years on active duty. He saw the Iraq War up close.

"We went on over 400 combat escort missions in eleven months, and I put in over 18,000 miles as lead driver through Sadr City," the twenty-eight-year-old recalls. "It changed me, a lot. Seeing kids just having to walk through their own sewage water because we destroyed all their public infrastructure, it just really pulled at my heartstrings."

So when he came back to the United States, Acheson spent four years agitating for peace with fellow members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, only to find himself feeling angry and frustrated at how little they managed to change. It was only after returning to Madison, Wisconsin, that Acheson found his calling, connecting with the owners of Gardens of Goodness in the summer of 2013. It was there, amid the tomatoes, that he discovered something his war-ratified brain couldn't have summoned during the most angry years of the Bush Administration.

Acheson discovered that he loves to farm.

"Growing herbs and vegetables really grounded me," he says.

"You all should try it out sometime," he tells his friends on Facebook. "Get back in touch with your roots, get some soil on those hands. If I had a soul, it would be healed."

Gardens of Goodness is a CSA, which stands for community-supported agriculture--an arrangement whereby consumers agree ahead of time to buy a bundle of produce every week from a local farmer. After three months of hard work on the Gardens of Goodness farm on the outskirts of town, Acheson began formulating a plan for a new approach to activism that completely bypasses the whole screaming at powerful people in hopes that they'll listen approach.

He decided to take over the CSA himself and run it for vets like him.

Soon, Gardens of Goodness CSA will become "Peacefully Organic Produce and CSA: A Veteran-Led Community Farm," he recently wrote, "aka 'POPs.'" The previous owners wanted "a clean break" to focus on their core business elsewhere, he says.

Starting next spring, Madison will have its very first veteran-run, organic CSA. And Acheson couldn't be happier about that.

He hopes the veteran-run CSA will be more than just a business.

"I want this to become a national center for veterans' farming," he says. "But it's also a platform to discuss other issues with the public. And it shows that you can do good things in your community without having to join the service."

Acheson isn't alone. Todd Dennis, a fellow...