On June 23, 2018, Round the Bend Farm, a former Greenhouse Initiative of the Marion Institute, hosted a Grand Opening celebration, inviting guests to tour their property as well as a new facility housing an education center, cafeteria and executive offices. The newly-constructed facility is a major achievement and brings RTB one step closer to fully realizing their vision of being a center for restorative community- a community of growers, educators and agripreneurs who support themselves through food and farming businesses, and nurture the public with real food and place-based education. The education center itself is a teaching tool: it was carefully designed and built with conservation in mind from the compost toilets to the woodworking that employs a number of minimal-waste technique to the double-studded walls and triple-pane windows. The building uses more than 6,000 “upcycled” roof shingles, and salvaged materials for tables, chairs, tiles, doors andkitchen equipment.
Under the direction of co-visionaries Desa Van Laarhoven and Geoff Kinder, the working farm, now 94 acres off Allens Neck Road in Dartmouth, is a model of sustainable living and seeks to be a ” living laboratory that cultivates, educates, and empowers people of all ages.” Desa was a former Executive Director of the Marion Institute and our founders, Michael and Margie Baldwin, were catalysts in the inception and development of RTB and play a significant role in its history. (Read more about RTB’s HERstory here.) In fact, Round the Bend honored this connection with the Baldwin Library, a space that will act as a living room for the property’s tiny house dwellers.
Below are a few additional photos taken at the June Grand Opening event. For more information on Round the Bend, visit their website.
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