I would like to introduce our new Farm Director. Tara Laidlaw arrived here in early October and has settled in nicely to her new home on the banks of Spectacle Pond. Tara is 26 years old and comes from Menlo, California, which also happens to be the home of a tiny company called Facebook. You may have heard of it before. Tara spent three years working at an educational farm and wilderness preserve in her home state, where she led garden explorations and helped take care of the animals. She moved on to Minnesota shortly after to work at Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center as a naturalist and ropes course instructor.

Tara is very excited to be working and living here at camp. She has taken this job at a unique time in the life of our small farm. Two years ago a piece of land behind the Burgess dining hall was transformed into a working farm with a fenced in vegetable and herb garden, a large greenhouse, a chicken coup and a pen for our five goats. It has quickly become one of Camp’s most exciting program areas. Tara likes that so many different groups of people get to benefit from the farm. Throughout the year we see campers, volunteers, students and community members working on the land. We also see much of the healthy produce from the farm make its way to our camp dining hall and area food pantries, where people get to enjoy the benefits of home grown organic vegetables. Tara is very passionate about the impact a place like this can have. She feels fortunate that her life has led her back into farm education, and she is already working hard to make this a strong year for the young program.

She also enjoys living at camp. As you may know, our camp property on Cape Cod has been the home to many year round staff through the decades. It is indeed a special place to call home. People come and go, and leave their mark in some way on this landscape or in the historical narrative of Burgess and Hayward. Tara recognizes that she is now part of a long camp story that goes back to the 1920’s, and that her tiny cabin and the farm land she is now directing have seen immense change over the years.

The other day she awoke in the morning to see the water as smooth as glass, reflecting perfectly the graceful body of a duck, and during her work day she unearthed from the garden an old glass bottle and a rusty metal buckle from a horses bridle. With all this beauty and history and potential, Tara knew she had landed in the right place.