Lineville, Alabama, horse farm a healing place for veterans
From left, Jared; Dave Flounders and Kathy Saucier, co-owners of Samson’s Strength equine farm in Lineville; and Namaan and Amos stand in the first veterans home to house visitors who come to heal by connecting with horses. (contributed)
An equine farm in Lineville allows veterans and their families who are adjusting to civilian life to connect with horses and overcome physical and emotional challenges.
Samson’s Strength Farms and Veterans Ventures is named after a horse that helped owner Dave Flounders, 60, overcome his own problems related to being a veteran.
Flounders co-owns the farm with his wife, Kathy Saucier, 60, a mental health counselor for veterans. Previously, she was a counselor who served in the Connecticut National Guard, and she currently maintains a private practice that mostly helps people who have suffered from trauma.
Saucier met Flounders while they were teaching a suicide prevention class in the military. After the two fell in love, she tried to think of a way to better support him with his own problems with PTSD and feeling displaced.
“We saw soldiers struggling with the same thing Dave was struggling with,” Saucier said, “and we wanted to provide an opportunity to support others who were transitioning into civilian life. We had the idea of building a place where veterans can come and stay temporarily and get the help they need.”
The two researched available properties throughout the Southeast and found a 115-acre, mile-long stretch of land in Lineville that they could afford.
Partnerships vital for their projects
The couple moved to Lineville, settled and partnered first with the Daniel Foundation out of Birmingham, which gave them direction for receiving funds. They wrote a grant, explained the purpose of their project to help veterans and received financing to build their first veterans’ house, which is just big enough for two people, in 2018.
The couple then received help from the McWhorter School of Building Science at Auburn University. Senior students assisted the nonprofit by doing a service-learning project. The Ashland Housing Development Corp. partnered with them and temporarily gave them a 10,000-square-foot warehouse for a workspace. That’s where framing for the houses was put together; final assembly was done onsite. Next, they petitioned teams from Oxford’s Home Depot to assist them in erecting the shells of more houses.
One house has been built and occupied, and five others are in various stages of completion.
Now the couple needs donations of time, money and equipment to fulfill their goals. They require an operator of a bulldozer and the equipment to reshape the land for a horse training area. They need skilled carpenters, electricians and plumbers for additional work on the five houses and a group kitchen. They can always use financial assistance to buy building materials and food to feed volunteers.
Dave Flounders with one of the horses at his and his wife’s Samson’s Strength equine farm in Lineville. (contributed)
How horses help
The couple decided to use horses to help veterans heal. Saucier had grown up riding, had once worked in a racetrack barn, was a hunter-jumper and rode on an equestrian team in college. In grad school, her thesis was how horses help humans feel better.
Dave traveled to a mustang training center in Ohio, where for 12 weeks he learned all he could about caring for horses. Afterward, he brought two more horses to the farm, his source being a Trainer Incentive Program through the Mustang Heritage Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management.
The first horse was Samson, a 1-year-old mustang which connected with Flounders at once.
“I’m not a horse person, but the horse put his head on my shoulder,” Flounders said about his first visit to the mustang training center. “I came back two weeks later and began to brush him. No one had been able to do that before.”
Flounders also brought back a second horse, a mare named Grace. She had lost a foal through death or separation. Her grief was so intense that she had shut out interactions with humans and horses. Saucier recognized the animal’s grief and began quietly sitting in the stall with her. After several visits over a few months, the horse began to trust her.
“She took on the role of a mom that keeps an eye on her teen son,” Saucier said.
Day-to-day operations
The couple takes care of their horses, their house, the veterans’ house, a vegetable garden, five donkeys and a pen full of chickens. One day, Saucier met a Lineville resident and veteran who was a community volunteer and the father of several sons.
“We talked about some of the things their sons experienced having a combat veteran for a father,” she said. “I invited him to bring the boys out to do a homeschool project.”
At first, the brothers came two at a time for a few hours and began learning about the school subjects related to the care of an animal, such as anatomy. Their other brothers began visiting. Now, two to five of the boys from the family come two to three times a week to help on the farm and learn vocational skills.
Three of the brothers — Jared, Amos and Namaan — were on the farm on a recent Friday. Each had a different perspective about their experiences.
“This has helped me to be aware of how I act,” Jared said. “When I am acting negatively around a horse, I am putting off negative energy. I am aware of what I am doing and have learned how to correct it.”
“Taking care of a horse helped me relax,” Amos said. “We have to relax to keep the horses calm, and that helps us and them.”
“I am not scared. The horses were not afraid of me because I am small,” Namaan said. “If a horse is angry, they are a lot like us. I try to stay away from an angry horse until it calms down.”
The couple will speak at the Oxford Civic Center on Friday, May 17, at the Out of the Shadows mental health conference sponsored by Jacksonville State University and the University of Alabama’s School of Alcohol and Other Drug Studies.
For more information about volunteering or donating to the veterans farm, call 860-861-6747.
