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.” Rich Holschuh, Director of the Atowi Project, channels these ancient truths in The Long and the Short of It on page 9.

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.