Green Mountain and White Mountain are on hiking trips in Vermont and New Hampshire, respectively.  Umbagog is experiencing a canoeing trip on the NH/Maine border.  B&P is on a trip to work with the folks at Bread and Puppet in Glover, VT.  Sugar Shack is building a small building at a farm in Randolph, VT (they carried most of the pre-assembled pieces with them).  Farm Girl Farm is working on a CSA in Egremont, MA.  The Homestead trip (aka the Hard Core Farmers) are tending our herd here and taking day trips to selected small farming operations in the area.  The Mystery Trip (a TF tradition) is an improv trip of sorts, leaving camp on foot with three staff and exploring the local area and being creative, writing journals and producing art.

Over the past week, our TF work projects have included the ongoing re-shingling of our beloved Rec Lodge, cooking (culminating in a camper-cooked supper on Sunday), acting as morning counselors at the Barn Day Camp, doing trip packout, building the Sugar Shack components, making a waterfront bench, pouring concrete pavers for our basketball court by the Dance Barn, building steps in the outdoor space affectionately known as LaLa Land, harvesting and weeding in the garden, and finishing the ‘bridge to nowhere.’

On Saturday mornings, we have a tradition of working together as an all-camp group.  This past Saturday, we hiked up past Peggy’s Pond to the Scott hayfield. We used bow saws and trimmers, as well as cleared some of the brush encroaching on the field.  After an hour and a half of this satisfying work, we admired our efforts while having Silent Meeting looking off to views of Killington and Shrewsbury.

This Saturday evening, we had the rare pleasure of having Frances Moore Lappe (author of Diet for a Small Planet) visit and speak to our assembled group in the Rec Lodge about the politics of food and democracy world-wide.  The campers were fully engaged and attentive. They gained a new perspective on this organic farm where we are lucky enough to live.

And a reminder!

The main Visiting Day at Tamarack Farm will still be at the end of this week, Saturday, July 24th. We’ll begin at mid-morning (10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.) and extend through mid-evening (9:00 p.m. ). Since Visiting Day for Indian Brook, Timberlake, Flying Cloud and Saltash Mountain will be on Friday, July 23rd, we will make time for any families who are coming to visit other campers on Friday to come visit us as well if they are unavailable on Saturday.

All of the Tamarack Farm campers will be returning from trips either on Thursday or Friday and we have tried to ensure that any campers with Friday visitors will be returning on Thursday.

The general schedule of the day looks like this:

We will  have some time in the morning when parents can participate in the work projects. Then we will join together for a picnic lunch time; we encourage families to bring picnics to share with campers and their friends (we will provide a picnic lunch for anyone who needs it). The afternoon will be is divided into three parts with various activities, including an open waterfront, on either side of “TF101″ (a mid-afternoon time when parents meet with the directors in the Rec Lodge to ask any questions you may have.) The later afternoon activity time includes barn chores, lake runs, etc.

Our supper is a buffet on the lawn followed by a Postum House (open mic) evening that can include family members performing. This will end at around 9 p.m., and then campers will transition into Dance Free.

Fingers crossed for good weather and we hope to see you then.

tom’b

The summer of 2010 has officially begun.  Sixty-seven Tamarack Farm campers arrived on Wednesday afternoon with their trunks, boots, and gloves, ready to get busy.

In the three days following their arrival, the garden has experienced the joy of an all-hands-on-deck weeding part. As a result, the ground between the Dance Barn and the Rec Barn has been cleared for our new basketball court, and the dining hall has been decorated with flags and a Facebook-type wall.  These farmers are not kidding around.

Campers have swiftly settled into the busy Tamarack Farm routine.  The first town criers of the year, Molly and Hannah, did a fantastic job of leading us through our pre-meal circles and post-meal singing.  Returning campers have stepped up every day since to do the same, and the tiger box is overflowing with end-of-day affirmations.  Everyone is well into their first rotation of camp chores, including the Ye Olde Inn and Split Level campers, who are managing the summer’s first barn chores.

Sapphire and Halifax, respectively last year’s calf and piglet, have grown up (with Halifax weighing more than 600 pounds), and we are milking Rachel twice a day.  The kitchen is well stocked with the farm’s fresh eggs and milk. Our garden’s strawberries were recently spotted at breakfast.

This week, we hosted the first TF farmer’s market over at the Barn Day Camp. We are getting ready to make our garden love visible with a week of work projects that includes a harvest crew, a landscape team, and a construction squad for making a greenhouse planter. We also experienced a few spots of rain, but the weather has taken a turn for the better, and this afternoon saw a second bout of haying.  More than 15 campers volunteered to suit up and load 175 hay bales on Friday afternoon; the goal for the summer is 1,600.  With another week of hot, dry, sunshine called for, we’re hoping to get a little closer to filling the hayloft in our new livestock barn.

After a long morning of work projects, you would expect the energy level to wane, but the farmers have shown excitement about all-camp afternoon and evening activities.  In three afternoons we’vebeen able to create silkscreens, personal ceramic mugs, built a photo booth and a chipmunk palace and have written poetry. We’ve also taken plant identification walks, attempted to walk on the slack line, mastered the low-ropes course, strummed guitar, played soccer and invented a few water sports in the lake. Last night we threw a raucous scavenger hunt; campers built human pyramids, dressed their teams up as a rainbow, and came up with a song to sing to our wonderful cooks.

Friday evening’s cabin night was declared a grand success—in their cabins, groups played games, lit campfires, cooked delicious treats, and got to know who they’re building a community with this summer.
The swim tests have been swum, the 4:30 long runs have begun, the song cards have been dusted off.  The kybos have been sawdusted, the dish routine has been established, and we are happy to report that the costumes in Fred the Loft are being utilized to their fullest potential.  The first installment of Postum House, TF’s open mic night, begins this evening.  The bar has been set, the first note has been sung, and wow, they are high.  Camp has begun.  Stay tuned for more.

Pretzel,

Marne Litfin

This week also saw several out-of-camp adventures - the entire camp was hosted by Flying Cloud for their first naming ceremony of the summer, and a vanful of campers travelled with Kuenzi to her family’s farm near Montpelier to see a local vegetable-production farm firsthand.  The farm has an in-house biodiesel production facility, a heavily customized ‘tractor of the future’, and a host of other innovations that allow the farm to flourish in an era when industrial scale agri-business is tough competition.

Trips

Next week (July 17-23) is our trips week, and all 66 campers and most of our staff are heading out for a week of farm service, hiking, canoeing, and unknown adventures.  All of us are excited, both for the trips and for the return next weekend to our beloved farm, warm dry clothes, and the reunited community.

Visiting Day

Visiting day is next Saturday, July 25.  We look forward to seeing the many family members and friends who we hope will come to briefly be a part of Tamarack Farm 2009.  We ask that visitors arrive no earlier than 11 AM; feel free to bring a picnic lunch for your camper if you like, but please bring enough to share with a few campers who don’t have visitors.  After a picnic lunch, we’ll have activities and time to visit in the afternoon and an extended shared dinner.  At 9 PM we will ask our visitors to say goodbye, and will officially kick off the second half of Tamarack Farm 2009.

-Dave

Tamarack Farm (the physical veggie-pumping part) is already filling our bellies!  We’ve been enjoying deliciously prepared meals full of garden vegetables (and one delicious fruit): broccoli, radishes, garlic scapes, swiss chard, lettuce and strawberries!  We’re drinking milk from our own cows, pasteurized in the dairy barn and carried (literally) to our camp’s kitchen.  Meal after meal, we are preparing delicious, nutritious, and as-local-as-it-gets food.

It has been raining a lot, nearly every single day, but spirits are high.  Saturday morning the entire camp went to the garden to give our crops some breathing and growing room.  Our “All-Camp Weed” was hugely successful.  The rows look wonderful and it felt so good to get hands and toes dirty and to get to know new people while working en masse. It might be cliche but it is certainly true that many hands make for light work.  Postum House is Tamarack Farm’s version of a variety/talent show. We are a camp full of musical, dancing, funny, witty, entertaining campers and staff. Awesome to see the talents of those you live with shining and on display as we did on Saturday night.

And Sunday the Sun shone! All day long!  All in all we’re settling nicely into the rhythm of life at TF. We rise early, some of us tend to the animals while others tidy up.  A bread crew has been baking fresh, hot bread for us daily.  We share silence amidst the beauty and bird calls of nature in our outdoor circle for Silent Meeting.  We sing.  We get to work in the morning, out in the garden, in the woodshop, in the kitchen.  And in the afternoons we do everything from exploring the lake by canoe to building kinetic sculptures with what some might call ‘junk.’  All Farm and Wilderness camps celebrated Interdependence Day Tuesday afternoon. Tamarack Farm wowed the assembled with our song and outrageous costumery.

We are off to a good start building a cupola and barn doors for the new Livestock Barn.  The contractors raised the walls this week.  And tonight (Thursday) we are all going to a Naming Ceremony at Flying Cloud.

Summer is roaring off to a good start and we will soon be posting detailed schedule for Visiting Day (July 25 mid-morning to 9:30 pm)
-Leonora

Summer in the verdant Vermont valley. Does it get any better than this? Inspiring, enthusiastic human beings gathered to live simply and well together. A lake for swimming. Woods and fields for exploring and sanctuary. In addition to a superstar staff we’re sharing the land with a milking cow called Strawberry, a dozen laying hens, Halifax the pig, Sapphire the calf and 98 meat birds growing every day.

The year-round crew has tended this land lovingly. We, the 66 Tamarack Farm campers, two dozen summer staff and a cadre of others will reap the fruits of the year-round labors: healthy farm animals, rows of flowers, herbs and vegetables that will nourish us as we tend and cultivate them this summer.

The foundation for a new, more functional, livestock barn has been poured and construction is underway. Campers will build a cupola and barn doors in Work Projects this summer.

It is the campers who make summer camp. It is the community of support with a healthy dose of challenge — dancing on the precipice being stretched while being lovingly held…

that makes Tamarack Farm. Welcome, campers. We’re thrilled you’re here.
-Leonora

It’s really a pleasure to communicate with campers and families, but it’s not always easy to figure out the best way to do that.  In the summer the pace is so fast it’s hard to find time to reflect.   But this will begin an attempt to be better at it.  Also, within the week, I will be sending a newsletter out to each 2009 family.

This summer is shaping up to be a strong one; we are reinvigorating the farming aspect of our camp…
and we have a strong staff, many of them returning.
CABIN STAFF:
Dana Powell
Lily Swartz
Katy Blackman
Kate Sweeney
Morgan Brown
Kuenzi Wiswal
Tess Hobbs
Even Taylor
Amy Tabakin
Dave Patterson
John Ward
Cody Tannen-Barrup
Thom Stead
Eli Dwight
Adam Walker
Steve Cohen
Ryan Duerme
Alex Bralow

COOKS:
Becca Hebert
Ole Bye
China Camacho

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Jenna Hsiang
WORK PROJECTS HEAD: Hunter Berryhill
BARNS AND GARDENS HEAD: Leonora Tisdale
FARM INTERN: Stephanie Hall
NURSE: Shannon Carroll

It would be great to get an email address for all parents (perhaps one designated to receive TF emails).  Sometimes the hand-written ones on the applications are hard to read.  You can simply email me (if you haven’t already, if we’ve been corresponding, I have it) at TBarrup@aol.com and I will add you to the list…

be well,
tom’b

Tom Barrup, Tamarack Farm Director

Parents of Tamarack Farmers, we want to let you know about how we’re going to use this blog space over the summer. We’re looking forward to sharing some of the experiences of the whole camp, and how a group of young adults build a strong community together, and we’ll use this space to do that. We’re not going to send out weekly mass emails, though; we would like to save email for the person-to-person communications we already share with you. Our general writing will go directly into this area, and we hope you’ll check it when you’re curious. We plan to post new material at the beginning of each week.