A handful of teenagers piles out of a white van pulled up next to a gas station pump. The group of boys and girls all start complaining about the heat. As they make their way down to Florida, they suffer through the transition from the cooler Midwestern temperatures to the rising humidity of a Southern summer. The group won’t get relief for the next two weeks. Instead, they’ll spend ten of the next fifteen days sweating through their sunscreen on a small demonstration farm in Fort Myers, Fla. Early the next afternoon, the van and its accompanying trailer pull through a small gate and drive past a cow pasture, volleyball court, and a few houses. The van pulls up next to a huge pole barn, and the somewhat groggy kids unload into the blinding sunlight. They’ve reached their destination: ECHO’s Global Farm.

The History

Starting in the late 1980s, many summers have seen groups of youth spend their Junes at ECHO (formerly Educational Concerns for ...