The Floyd County Cooperative Extension Office Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program partnered with Mountain Comprehensive Care’s Auxier Greenhouse this year. The Auxier Greenhouse is one of three programs around the area that provides supportive instruction to developmentally and intellectually disabled adults, all in a positive environment. The program grows and sells a variety of locally grown vegetable plants, house plants, annual flowers, perennials, trees and shrubs. In doing all this, the participants have the opportunity to gain life skills and improve their independence through vocational tasks, social interaction and interpersonal relationships. 

The Office Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program partnered with the Auxier Greenhouse to bring cooking and nutrition skills to the adults that were already receiving their services. For space, we would meet at our office here and the Greenhouse would provide extra volunteers to help assist and keep everyone on task. The participants were educated on how to prepare simple meals for themselves by learning things such as measuring out ingredients and learning to follow recipes, step by step. Perhaps one of the best tools for them was our recipe calendar. The group really enjoyed anticipating and knowing what we were going to cook that day. They would show up for our lesson so excited to help cook and taste test our finished product. One of the participants told me, “I didn’t really know how fun it was to cook and follow a recipe.” Even one of the volunteers got on board and confessed, “To be honest, I didn’t really think I would learn anything new from these lessons. But you have surprised me a couple of times. Plus these calendars are great! For just about every recipe we’ve had, I’ll usually go home and make it for my family the next day.”.