Apparently the tax season is good for at least one thing. It forced me to slow down, pull the numbers, look backward, and actually account for what the last year held.
Somewhere between receipts and spreadsheets, I realized I’ve been talking a lot about coaching and family and not nearly enough about the other force that’s been shaping my life over the last year, the nonprofit I founded, Joint 4ces, the place where my skills are applied in service and where my sense of purpose comes into the sharpest focus.
So this is me catching you up.
Last year was supposed to look very different.
On paper, Joint 4ces was lined up to receive two major federal grants, each in the six figures, funding that would have fast tracked our ability to scale veteran led agriculture and workforce development programs. It was the kind of funding that makes things feel official. Stable. Validated.
And then a new administration took office.
Almost overnight, those programs were defunded. Entire funding streams for veteran agriculture and nonprofit initiatives disappeared. No warning. No transition. Just gone.
In the moment, it was frustrating and deflating. It felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us after years of careful positioning and relationship building. We had to come back together as a team and ask a very real question.
What do we do now?
There are some things it is a gain to lose, and a loss to gain.
With a little distance, I can see that losing that funding may have been one of the best things that could have happened to us.
If those grants had come through, I would have been locked into timelines and program requirements that would have made it impossible for me to leave when life demanded that I go back to North Carolina to handle family responsibilities that could not be postponed or delegated.
At the time, it felt like a betrayal.
In hindsight, it was freedom.
While I was navigating those personal realities, Joint 4ces did not stall. It recalibrated. And that recalibration has been led, in large part, by our Vice President, Donte Graham. (@farmer_don_mendo @farmerdonsdelish)
I don’t say this lightly. What he built in 2025 is extraordinary.
He secured a USDA farm number. Completed the Disabled Veteran Business Enterprise (DVBE) registration process. Became a certified organic producer. Earned certification for hydroponic farming. Locked in six acres for soil based agriculture. Had 85% of the irrigation equipment donated. Launched an organic meal prep service in Ukiah in partnership with local businesses. Joined the Mendocino Farm Hub serving K-12 schools. Leveraged his logistics background to provide refrigerated trucking that connects producers to markets up and down the California coast.
No handouts. No safety net. Just consistency, relationships, and follow through.
While Donte was building real infrastructure in California, I was up and down the West Coast strengthening relationships across the veteran agriculture ecosystem. Deepening my involvement with the Farmer Veteran Coalition, I was elected to the California advisory board and helping produce a regional meetup in Southern California. We became an allied member of the National Farm to School Network and revitalized partnerships in Washington State with veteran led organizations doing meaningful work on the ground.
Farmer Veteran Coalition California Board 2025
None of it flashy. All of it necessary.
What 2025 became, unexpectedly, was a year of grassroots teamwork.
A reminder that even when federal systems fail to deliver on their promises around agriculture, veteran transition, suicide prevention, and addiction recovery, there are still people willing to come together and do the work anyway. People who refuse to quit simply because the support they were told would arrive never did.
We talk constantly about vulnerability in our food systems.
About the need for a new generation of agricultural leaders.
About the mental health crisis in the veteran community.
What we don’t talk about enough, are the people already proving that solutions don’t have to come top down. They can be built from the ground up, one relationship, one farm, one business at a time.
That’s what Joint 4ces exists to do. Provide a real pathway into agriculture and adjacent industries for people leaving active service or veterans who have been out for a while and are looking for a way to build a healthy, self directed life.
This isn’t about charity. It’s about agency.
About being the captain of your own economic engine. Working in alignment with nature. Building something that feeds people, literally and figuratively.
It’s taken time. It’s been slower than the version we imagined with federal backing.
And that’s okay.
Because the moment you take someone else’s money, you also take on their priorities.
Right now, this organization is being built with individual contributions, donated resources, long hours, and an unshakable commitment to the mission. The goal is the goal is the goal. And that hasn’t changed.
What’s been especially meaningful to witness is how Joint 4ces has shifted from being “my” idea to being a true we.
A civilian woman from North Carolina. An Army Ranger from Oakland. A small team of dedicated change-makers. Supported by advisors, partners, and communities. Building something that didn’t exist before. Something that is needed.
As we move into 2026, it feels good to have a real team, real traction, and a model that’s being proven in real time. If funding comes, great. We can use all the help we can get. If it doesn’t, we’ll build it ourselves.
There is no failure until you quit.
Rest when you’re tired.
Adjust when you need to.
But don’t quit.
Now’s not the time for that.
-Sunny
Just as nature takes every obstacle, every impediment, and works around it — turns it to its purposes, incorporates it into itself — so, too, a rational being can turn each setback into raw material and use it to achieve its goal.”
