Our Vision
We’re on a mission to connect people to the land and one another
Retreat Farm is a model, land-based, community-anchor institution located on 500 acres of Abenaki homelands at the edge of downtown Brattleboro, Vermont.
From our start in 2015, we have sought to restore the barns, forests, fields, and waters of this historic property and to establish an essential community place and platform for a range of community-advancing initiatives.
In doing so, we believe Retreat Farm is helping create a just, healthy, and sustainable community.
Our work is rooted in two fundamental conceptions of place.
The first is the indivisible connection of all living things and the earth and our human need physically and spiritually to embody this connection. Winona LaDuke, the renowned activist and founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, has written, “we are a part of everything that is beneath us, above us, and around us,” and “if we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable.” Wendell Berry, the equally renowned farmer/poet wrote “You cannot save the land apart from the people, or the people apart from the land” and “only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed.”
The second conception of place – “place-making” – reflects a more modern observation about humans’ need to share, create, learn and grow together in evolving, physical spaces.
At Retreat Farm we honor both conceptions of place and attempt through all our work to connect people to the land (i.e., the place) and to one another.
Click to the button above to view the 2023 Retreat Farm Annual Report and learn more about our vision, progress, and impact.
