Pathfinder Farms Programs
Pathfinder Farms Programs and Activities
We have a variety of programs to help young people build skills in a variety of areas. Whether they need assistance with homework or learn life skills, such as cooking, working with wood, and team building – we offer something for everyone!
Day School Program
This is a unique program that is tailored to the individual school system or independent consortium. In most cases, we interact with the students 14 to 21 days, during the normal school year. The students are with us for 5 to 6 hours each day and experience many self-care techiques and hands-on life building skills in our woodshop, landlab, and kitchen, as well as learn important critical thinking skills such as budgeting. This life skills-based education focuses on developing personal skills and relationships for these young people.
While this program does have a cost associated with it, it is never passed on to the family.
Summer Program
Our summer programs are all about building relationships and introducing fundamental social skills. This time is fully customizable, and we would be glad to speak with you on the possibilities.
We run each week for four days, where we spend three to four hours per day with these young people, enforcing the importance of social skills, personal care and self-care, and of course any time we can get some teaching in the vocations or land lab we take advantage of the time wisely.
Building lasting relationships with encouragement, strong growth, and a sense of community are key cornerstones of the program. We focus on helping these young people build these skills to help them when the new school year begins, setting them up for success and continued growth.
While this program does have a cost, it is never passed on to the family.
Your donations to Pathfinder Farms helps to support programs such as our summer program. We NEVER charge any of the families and young men we have in this program. Donations help to support this program, allowing us to purchase the supplies needed for activities and all operational costs associated with Pathfinder Farms.
Skywatcher Program
This program has our largest number of participants ranging from 15 to 30 kids, between the ages of 9 and 16 years old. The curriculum is designed around the armor of God and uses projects to teach life skills that produce positive life habits that will benefit the young men and their families. There are outposts and several camping trips with this ministry.
This program meets on Tuesday evenings during the school year (September - May), between 6:00 pm and 7:30 pm.
Your donations to Pathfinder Farms helps to support programs such as Skywatchers. We NEVER charge any of the families and young men we have in this program. Donations help to support this program, allowing us to purchase the supplies needed for activities and all operational costs associated with Pathfinder Farms.
GemSeekers Program
This group includes girls in K-6th grade, were we focus on the Gospel of Christ, including the Armor of God. The first half of the meeting is spent on prayer and Bible teaching, and the 2nd half is dedicated to projects that teach life skills that focus on positive life habits that will benefit these girls as they grow and mature into adulthood.
This program meets on Tuesday evenings during the school year (September to May), between 6:00 pm and 7:30 pm.
Our goal is to help these young girls develop a strong relationship with Jesus and to know they are loved. We have a lot of fun while doing all these things. "Our prayer is to add a teen group in the future." In the winter months it’s almost never dry so we keep them inside for the most part.
Your donations to Pathfinder Farms helps to support programs such as GemSeekers . We NEVER charge any of the families and young women we have in this program. Donations help to support this program, allowing us to purchase the supplies needed for activities and all operational costs associated with Pathfinder Farms.
Connections Plus Program
We work with the local church, Maranatha Church, to develop and deliver this program. This program generally works with middle school age kids and young high school students. This is a custom curriculum that is tailored to the needs of the students.
This program meets on Tuesday evenings during the school year (September to May), between 3:00pm and 5:00pm.
For example, if one of the young men needs a little help with his math,or maybe needs some self-care, we will take the time to give him the help he needs while we will continue with the other students. We try to use the outdoor grounds as much as possible for our programming, but when the weather gets bad, we move into the Woodshop or Activity Center to continue to teach life skills.
Your donations to Pathfinder Farms help to support programs such as Connections Plus. We NEVER charge any of the families and youngsters we have in this program. Donations help to support this program, allowing us to purchase the supplies needed for activities and all operational costs associated with Pathfinder Farms.
Pathfinder 16:11 Program
The Pathfinder 16:11 program is our Flagship program and longest running at over 8 years now. It is by far the most intensive program that we have, where we serve 8 to 12 young men each week during the school year. Many of these young men participate in our programs for 2 to 3 years prior to coming into the 16:11 program. Many will stay for another 2 or 3 years and continue to build their skills.
This program meets on Thursday evenings during the school year (September to May), between 3:30 pm and 7:30 pm.
The Pathfinder 16:11 program is very much a hands on program with many activities and faith-based lessons that are incorporated within each experience. Our purposeful interaction with these young men is consisten during our time. Meant to build on vocation, team building, life skills, and fellowship. We incorporate as many outdoor activities as possible (as long as the weather cooperates), such as hiking (nature walks), swimming, fishing, and archery to name a few. During our outside activities we incorporate lessons, such as tree identification, camp side cooking, garden harvesting, and navigation. We also have LOTS of fun! With just over 180 activities that we plan with these young men, we intentionally relate everything we do with the Bible and fellowship while building a positive relationship that we hope will last for years.
When the weather is not cooperating, you will often find these young men in the Activity Center. Projects done in the Woodshop, Kitchen, and main room, provide valuable life skills in so many areas, such as cooking, carpentry, and many other vocational skills. They learn measurements, using different tools (hand and electronic), and how to work individually and as a team.
We typically close the day out after our family style dinner and cleanup, with some great conversation - Bible study and fellowship are the perfect ending to our activity filled day together. At the end of the school year, the young men help plan a special activity trip that will utlize many of the skills they have learned throughout the year. It often includes a camping trip in the woods, field trips that consist of canoeing, horseback riding, and above all LOTS of great conversations!
The bonding with these young men is incredible and every year we are humbled by the growth of these young men who go through the entire program!
Your donations to Pathfinder Farms help to support programs such as Pathfinder 16:11. We NEVER charge any of the families and young men we have in this program. Donations help to support this program, allowing us to purchase the supplies needed for activities and all operational costs associated with Pathfinder Farms.
C.R.O.P Activity Area
This program is available to all our existing programs and can be linked together to make a more continuous program. We start plants from seed and transfer them to the greenhouse or directly into the garden. This program includes seed bed preparation, care of the plants, weeding, as well as harvest. After harvest we look forward to getting into the kitchen to teach them how to prepare or preserve the food that they grew. Much of the time spent in this program could be considered for community service hours.
Woodshop Activity Area
This element of our training is used in many of our programs. The woodshop is outfitted with many old school hand tools which we teach how to use, and then we show the more modern version. In many cases we will work with each student one on one to make sure that safety is kept at the highest level, we always do safety training first on the tool and any situation awareness that applies. In most cases they keep whatever they make and use them for gifts or to put in their survival kits.
Kitchen Activity Area
The kitchen is much like the woodshop in many ways. We have them build food instead of a gift. They still need to learn all the tools of the kitchen and the safety rules that apply. In the kitchen and woodshop, math plays a vital role. We enforce weights, volumes, measurements, fractions, and decimals as a big part of whatever project they are working on.
Land Lab/Greenhouse Activity Area
In this area of training the students work with real life issues and how those issues can be predicted and altered to the benefit of the team and or the individuals. Whether on a low course element, or in the greenhouse / garden the value of learning how decisions we make will affect us all, whether in a positive or negative way, is the cornerstone of this program. By investing thought, time and energy we can make some very good choices with our life.
