Mission & Activities
Tamarack Farm creates a safe place in which to assist teenagers in the transition to a healthy, responsible, purposeful adulthood through their awareness of themselves and their place in community and on the earth. Tamarack Farm is guided by the belief in the Light within each person and by a commitment to simplicity, justice and service.
To this end, the Tamarack Farm program enables campers to:
- practice the skills necessary to build a just community
- loosen their assumptions about people and lifestyles that are different from what they have previously known
- learn to serve others
- learn the cycles of life through farming
- acquire tools that lead to a life of healthy relationships and sexuality
- be mentored by adults outside their family
- experience satisfaction from a simple life, without drugs, recorded music or “modern conveniences”
- practice making choices and evaluating those choices
- find joy in work
- learn to speak up
Tamarack Farm’s Activities Include:
Work and Farm Projects
Campers can learn how to build a cabin, cook a meal, milk a cow, pick scarlet runner beans, lay a stone wall, shingle a roof, adjust a carburetor, or pour a concrete floor. Three or four times a summer, when the weather is right, the call goes out for all hands to bring in the hay -some hours of sweaty work in the sun followed by a refreshing plunge in the lake!
Service Projects
Campers might build a play structure for a local women’s shelter, preserve wildlife habitats, or help a local farmer get the hay in before a rain.
Arts & Music
Campers can carve a spoon, tie-dye clothing, paint and draw, sing harmony, print a roll of film, build a clay pot, plant a personal garden plot, or sit on the front porch in a free-form music jam.
Outdoor and “Out of Camp” Adventures
For one week in the middle of the summer, everyone goes out on a five-day trip with a small group. This could be a hiking adventure, a canoe trip, or rock climbing in the New England mountains. It could be a base-camp trip; or it might be experiencing life on a family farm, in an intentional community, or at a Buddhist monastery.
Community Building
Every Wednesday night 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. At every Town Meeting the power of a caring community is affirmed.
Games & Evening Activities
Evenings are spent playing Capture the Flag or Sardines, ultimate Frisbee, or basketball; performing for each other in talent shows; discussing global issues; or gathering in young men’s and women’s circles.
In this open, nurturing community, lasting friendships develop quickly. When campers depart after a summer at Tamarack Farm, they return home with a deeper understanding of themselves and a recognition of the joys and struggles of living closely with other people. For many, it is an experience that they will draw on for the rest of their lives.
