There's something to be said about the
views of this 55 acre Douglas County farm.
I love being out there and you can
be out there for as long as you want
views that give high
school Junior Evan Sponde.
I kind of just get a sense of calmness and.
Relief. Peace. It kind of helps you.
Work through those emotions, I'd say and.
It just gives you a sense of confidence.
I talked to Evan at his home
about his experience every week
at the farm. He suffers from PTSD
coming up on four years now,
so it in May. It'll be four years
after he survived the stem high school
shooting in Highlands Ranch in 2019.
So on May 7th, 2019, shooter at my school.
Opened fire to a classroom right
across the hallway from mine.
And he shot and killed one kid who was
trying to run and protect everybody else.
There was one person in my class who got
shot through the wall. In the moment,
I kind of didn't know what to think.
I was pretty much frozen, but looking back.
It was a really hard experience for me. For
Evan, Skyview Farm is helping him cope.
I feel like with PTSD
it's easy to always have.
I guess ton of thoughts running through
your mind at the same time and just being
out there kind of sues those thoughts.
Well good morning everyone.
Welcome to Skyview Farm thoughts.
I'm Miss Wendy and I'm super
excited to have you guys out here.
Wendy Ingraham is trying to help
Douglas County teens cope with.
I have a daughter that's now
14 and as I kind of digged a
little more into suicide and and.
Mental health, depression, anxiety.
I learned that Douglas County
has one of the highest rates of
attempted suicide in the country.
Today you will see that we have a group
of kids from DC Oakes, a high school.
Ingram owns and manages
the farm with her husband.
You guys are going to design A
playground and build it today
and opens their land to schools in
the area to help with their mental
health through animal therapy.
We have Piper and Lulu.
They come here, Lulu,
so we have our dogs,
we have Goliath here, we have Fabio,
so we have at any given time
49 horses. We have chickens, we have ducks.
We'd like to rescue animals from the
Dumb Friends League and, you know,
give them a nice place to live. It's
a mission, she says she was compelled to do,
so she started the Robins Nest Foundation.
It was a concept brought on
3 1/2 four years ago. From.
Three of my friends committing suicide
within in three months. Hey Ben
Ingram shares are farm with
other mental health resources,
mustard seed Ranch and the
aspirin effect to make mental
health help more accessible.
She believes a human connection with
animals does something for the soul.
They feed you with love and
compassion in their understanding,
sometimes more so than the human.
They're the most honest animals
I know, and I think that's why
they're so powerful in this work.
Hillary Nicholas is a therapist and the
program director for Mustard Seed Ranch.
She says she's seeing a rise in
numbers of mental health cases.
We've been seeing it for a long time,
and I think since COVID,
just the isolation and that lack of
connection has made it much more pronounced.
And I think that that's something we
all need to recognize and make it,
you know, a comfortable space
for us to talk about it.
And finding other outlets that
might work or get through to a kid,
Nicholas says the connection with
horses provides honest biofeedback.
Well, if I have a kiddo that's
a little bit disengaged,
even bandit here, who's the most loving,
caring horse he's going to disengage?
And then that provides a space for
us to talk about what's going on.
There's definitely been some struggles,
but I'm learning to overcome them, and
being at their ranch kind of helps me just.
Be out without noise, just in the open.
Feedback from stories like Evans is
what keeps Ingram on her mission.
It's a lot of work out here,
a lot of hardship.
A lot of doubts sometimes if
financially cause it's it's expensive
to keep up animals in a farm,
but when you hear stories like that.
Nothing in the world stops you.
It's that feeling of calm
that's helping teens like Evan.
You know, there's always
ups and downs, but I think.
In the end, it kind of taught me
to have more empathy for people.
That makes this farm a much needed break.
Looking at the future could be
scary for some people, but.
I'd say my experience
with going to the ranch,
it kind of helps you ease those
thoughts and just cool off for 9 news
and it gives you that kind of sense
of relief and you just have more
time and space to just think alone.
I'm Byron Reed.