WEST PARIS — When 14-year-old Soran Adams started seventh grade at Oxford Hills Middle School last year he struggled with the shift from his close-knit class at Agnes Gray and Paris elementary schools to being one in a class of about 250 kids.

He found new connections and support by joining 4H. Now, as a 4H Ambassador he has plans to share the importance of mental health with other youth living in rural and agricultural communities.

“The 4H program is about sustainable agriculture,” Adams told the Advertiser Democrat during a visit to his family’s West Paris homestead. “And that includes mental health, which is a big issue in the agriculture community. It can be a lonely lifestyle.

“This is my first 4H club. I needed something to do, being fresh off the transition to middle school. My relationships were falling apart with some of my friends. I needed something to take my mind off everything that was going wrong.”

So last fall Adams signed up with the Ambassador Program. The group of 15-25 youth met first through Zoom every other week where participants learned about the structure and got to know each other.

Then the program swung to in-person events. They took field trips to different agricultural units across the state. The first was an oyster farm in the Midcoast area.

“It was Mooks Sea Farm” in Walpole, Adams said. “We learned shucking. You have to cut the muscle off from the shell. It was fun shucking, but oysters are disgusting.

“We learned about how they are raised. They cultivate green algae and brown algae, for the food, in these big test tubes. And they had these big tubs. Some of them had oysters in them and some had the algae growing. It was a really loud area.”

The ambassadors also learned about oyster farming production and the scanning process to size if the shellfish are ready for harvest or need to more time to mature.

For the kids’ final project and trip this spring they developed presentations based on what agriculture means to them.

“Some did slideshows or speeches,” he said. “I made muffins. Because what agriculture means to me is that you can provide for the people you care about. And by using locally sourced things you provide for other people doing what they care about.

“I like to make food for my family every now and then. Muffins are some of my favorite things to make, and I used almost all locally sourced ingredients from the Fare Share Market.”

The final trip, an overnight to Orono, was fantastic, Adams said. The group stayed at a hotel, shared their presentations and worked on team building projects that gave the kids opportunities to build friendships with others in the program.

Part of the experience included trying fermented foods, including chocolate, gingerbread and onions. As it turned out, Adams said, fermented chocolate is not really different than regular chocolate.

“We went to a rock-climbing facility. And we visited a (dairy) farm and learned about sophisticated robots they use. The cows choose when they want to be milked, and they really like it. They will line up to take their turn and they get treats while they’re milking. It’s really neat.”

The most fascinating thing Adams learned about was, at UMaine Orono, developing technology that takes wood pulp ground up to molecular scale.

“Then they mix it into two things, like mashed potatoes and cake, which you then mix together. And you get this weird slime stuff that you can mold into whatever you want to.

“When it dries, it shrinks and becomes really, really hard. It’s as hard as metal so it could be used to make things like phone cases. It’s potentially a replacement for plastics and cardboards. It’s also 100% biodegradable and non-toxic. They’re also researching to use it in things like fire extinguishers.”

As an ambassador, Adams has now turned to his goals – working to promote mental health through agricultural outreach.

“One of the things they did was bring people in who had agricultural jobs to talk with us,” he explained. “This one woman, she told us she had a job where she literally never left the middle of the woods. She was closer with bears and bumblebees than with any other human, which was tough on her mental health.”

After learning how working in agriculture may create isolating effects on people Adams became determined to launch a nonprofit, with some friends, to help address it.

“Our working name is ‘Voices for the Unheard,’” he said. “We hope to work with Tara Marble of 4H, one of the people directing the program and said she was interested in working with me. Other potential partners we’re looking at are like OUT Maine and Healthy Oxford Hills.

“There’s one boy I met through the program who already started a nonprofit with similar goals as me. I plan to reach out to him to see if he’s interested in collaborating on the project. The more people we can work with who are established, with their feet on the ground, the better. We’re all kids, starting big projects.”

Adams has been working on yard work for his parents to earn money for his start-up.

“I want to invest in a website, with a domain and creator to spread our message,” he said. “We also want to attend events like fairs or a pride parade. We hope to work with 4H to get help, through Tara Marble.”

Adams’ 4H Ambassador work will take him through the rest of this year. The program courses have been completed, but the ambassadors’ roles will continue with more field trips and opportunities to mentor 4H kids between first and sixth grade.

“Our main goal is to do seminars to spread awareness about mental health in agriculture,” he said. “We have a focus on neglect and other issues caused by lack of parental support. It’s 100% for youth up to 20 – we want to help people from all walks of life to know that it’s okay to not be okay.”

That is something that Adams says took him a long time to realize.

“Mental health and those issues – it’s something that people don’t have to be ashamed of. The more you feel ashamed of it, the worse it will get. We want to stop the stigma.

“It’s a matter very close to me and some of my friends.”

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