By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Asked by the local school district whether she’d be willing to put a special needs student to work for a couple of hours per day, two or three days per week, Deidre Finley said yes. She knew how much her own daughter Leah, pictured here, loved the chickens and plants that call Big Dipper Farm home, and suspected that any teen would respond well to it. “It has to be good to get any kid outdoors,” said Finley, “out of the artificial world so many are in all the time, and into the real world of plants, dirt, and animals.”

She was right. Her student had never seen a chicken before, and loves the plants. When working at Big Dipper, which is a retail and mail-order nursery, visible symptoms of the student’s autism are minimal or absent.

Finley says she wants to expand this program simply because it does so much obvious good, and Leah doesn’t mind sharing her chickens for a great cause.