Description:
Settled snugly between a steep ridge to the east and a long glacial lake to the west, Tamarack Farm is a rural farm carved from the Vermont woods. Each summer, a wonderfully close community of staff and campers can grow through shared work and simple living. Guided by mature, skilled staff, campers are given many opportunities for meaningful responsibility.
Six mornings a week, the whole camp works on projects around the farm. Campers might learn how to builda cabin, cook a meal, milk a cow, pick scarlet runner beans, lay a stone wall, shingle a roof or pour a concrete floor. Sometimes projects are in service to others; building a play structure for a local women's shelter, preserving wildlife habitats, or helping a local farmer get his hay in before a rain.
The the afternoon there arean exciting range of options. Campers can carve awooden spoon, play Ultimate Frisbee, sing harmony, adjust a carburetor, printa roll of film, swim, build a clay pot or climb a rock face.
For one week out of the summer everyone goes out on a five day, ten person trip. this could be a hiking or canoeing adventure or it could be a base camp trip, experiencing life on a family farm, in an intentional community or at a Buddhist monastery.
Every Monday at Town Meeting, we discuss community issues or problems openly within the safety of the consensus process. Anyone can raise concerns. Occasionally brilliant solutions emerge from our collective wisdom, but every time the power of a caring community is affirmed.
In this open and nuturing community, lasting friendships develop quickly. When campers depart after the summer at the Farm, they return home with a deeper understanding of themselves and a recognition of the joy and struggles of living closely with other people. For many, it isan experience that they will draw on for the rest of thier lives.
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