Homefields is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization. We're home to people with special needs and host an organic CSA program. This setting connects individuals to larger communities in a natural way. Our goal is to expand this success, making a bigger impact in this community.
Fun in the Dark Night Golf
Friday, June 21—Registration at 7:30 PM, play at 8:15 PM! Celebrate the first night of summer under the moon and stars on an illuminated golf course. Play will be sixsomes in a scramble format, $45 per golfer. You’ve never had more fun with a club and a glow stick. Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information or to register, or visit the Crossgates Golf Club pro shop: One Crossland Pass, Millersville, PA.
Announcing Talks in the Field
Exciting discussions with local experts. Admittance is free but limited. Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information and to reserve your spot.
5/18/13 Mandy Arrowsmith, Hill Acres Pride Farm. Everything you wanted to know about cheese and cheese-making. Free samples.6/8/13 Stephanie Breneman, Abendessen Breads. Will present on German bread-making techniques.
6/15/13 Susan Hohenadel, Registered Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Educator, will talk about healthy eating and provide take-home recipes.
6/29/13 Danielle Frederick-Rhoades, Backyard Bee Keeper and owner of “Belle’s Bees Apiary”. Facts on beehives, colonies, with a short walk to active hives, applying theory to practice.
Civic Leadership Award
Homefields has received the 2013 Walker Center’s Distinguished Civic Leadership Award from Millersville University, recognizing “individuals or organizations that make noteworthy civic and community contributions of local, regional, national or international impact and who have been a catalyst for encouraging civic engagement on the part of others.”
The reception dinner was Thursday, April 11, following a keynote by Andrew Slack, Founder and Executive Director of the Harry Potter Alliance.
Homefields: 20 Years Later
How do you measure results? Can a picture really tell a thousand words? Click on the thumbnail to see what 20 years of community involvement, volunteer dedication, collaboration with other organizations, donations, and careful planning can achieve.
Save the Land Drive
You may have heard about developers approaching our neighbor (and township) in attempts to build a housing development on what is now farmland. If they had succeeded, runoff chemicals and winter salt would have jeopardized our organic farm program, one that has provided produce to hundreds of local families and taught work skills to a hundred farmer trainees with barriers to competitive employment. Acres of farmland to our east would be paved over.
We responded quickly, buying time with a downpayment at auction. But we need your help on the mortgage. We need your donation to secure this land. You may not be able to buy an acre, but if you can help us to our goal of $250,000, farmland that’s been farmland for generations will stay that way. Otherwise, it goes back on the auction block.
Your donation will have an immediate and lasting effect in our community and we urge you to act now. Read through our history, ask us a question at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Most importantly, make a donation today through the button above (to donate using a credit card, click "continue" toward the bottom of the PayPal page). Thank you in advance!
Conception
In 1991, a group of parents and invited professionals came together to discuss the state of affairs for their children, and the plight of Lancaster County adults with mental retardation and other disabilities. Existing programs were at capacity with long waiting lists. Our group, determined to build a step where none existed, imagined a more flexible environment where adults with mental retardation and other special needs, families, and the community, would partner together to create new opportunities.
The Dream
We wrote a mission statement expressing a desire for a financially secure, long-term home in a safe, family-like setting where there is respect for the individual in a holistic sense, and where fun and creativity are revered as basic human needs. The home would be situated on land that supported a small farming operation with year-round projects. This environment, with many on-going activities, would stimulate residents and offer them new options. Then we took that dream and made it come true.
Realization
Five families who love an adult member with special needs incorporated, pooled their finances, and purchased an eight-acre farm in Millersville, PA in the summer of 1994. Homefields’ philosophy is a nurturing, self-sufficient one, so the people who eventually moved to Homefields, with the help of their families, were instrumental in renovating and personalizing their own home. Everyone rolled up their sleeves to remodel a ranch house, restore a stone house, disassemble and move a fence, paint a barn, clean up the grounds, and plant even more flowers.
Three years after the first meeting, three adults who require assisted living moved into the stone house. Soon after, the ranch house was completed and three other residents moved into that home.
The Present
The residents continue to live as independently as possible at Homefields. They are supported by the professional staff of Community Services Group, are loved by their families, and are protected through the watchfulness of family members, advocates, the Lancaster County Office of Mental Health/Mental Retardation, and Homefields' Board of Directors. New families have come our way seeking a home for their cherished son or daughter.
The Goodwill at Homefields vocational farm program has taught work skills to over a hundred farmer trainees. Hundreds of families have been nourished by the farm’s organic produce, grown by adults with disabilities and other barriers to independence.
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