At this Vermont farm, BIPOC find refuge from a hostile world and reconnect with nature

For over twenty years, Knoll Farm has provided weeklong retreats for people of color to find healing outside the confines of society.

Participants of the Better Selves Fellowship at Knoll Farm in Waitsfield, Vermont. The fellowship allows BIPOC and their allies to spend a week on the farm to rest and recover. Knoll Farm gifts the week to attendees thanks to grants and donations. Photo courtesy of Knoll Farm.

“The most important thing I can tell you tonight is that you belong here.”

It’s the opening statement Peter Forbes of Knoll Farm made to hundreds of guests of the farm at their 2022 annual benefit concert. This simple sentence sums up everything about his philosophy for living, which he calls “radical hospitality.”

While the 160 acres he and his partner Helen Whybrow farm in Waitsfield are technically theirs, ownership is the last thing they claim. It’s rooted in their belief that nature has the capacity to heal and that everyone should have access to that healing.

“The primary relationship every human being has is with nature and other human beings. Part of what consumerism and Western society does is dissolve both of those primary forms of relationship,” Forbes explained.

In particular, lack of access to nature is common for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), known as the nature gap. It’s the result of living in a world where racism, inequality, and the resulting trauma are still pervasive.