Tamarack Farm is a camp for up to 70 teenagers, ages 15-17. 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. The program is focused on work, service, farming and community and teens build close friendships with one another and with adults. Campers are shown how to find joy in work, how to serve others, how to practice skills necessary to build a just community, and how to experience satisfaction from a simple life, without drugs, recorded music or modern conveniences. At TF, teens can loosen their assumptions about people and lifestyles that are different from their own, learn about the cycles of life through farming, acquire tools that lead to healthy relationships and sexuality, and practice making choices about their own lives.
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. From occasional haying, to the Farm Stand at the Barn Day Camp, campers explore farm and work in many ways!
Service Projects: Campers might build a play structure for another camp, preserve wildlife habitats, or help a local farmer get the hay in before a rain.
Arts & Music: Campers can carve a spoon, screen print clothing, paint and draw, sing in harmony, build an Adirondack Chair, 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 four-day trip with a small group. Campers go hiking, canoeing, or experience a week in service at a local farm or organization.
Community Building: Every Monday 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 farming; or gathering in small circles to look at the teen perspective on issues such as gender, class and race.
