By Alec Strum
Hidden in the Plymouth Valley of Windsor County lie the Farm & Wilderness camps, a group of Quaker-based wilderness residential summer camps on the Woodward Reservoir, just a few miles from Killington. Farm & Wilderness, a nonprofit camping organization, is hosting its annual fair on August 9, which is open to the public at no cost except parking.
The fair features various attractions, all powered by the staff and campers at the Farm & Wilderness camps, as their campuses are minimally powered by electricity. These attractions include a water slide where campers pull wooden carts into the reservoir, a zipline pulled by campers, and a human-powered Ferris wheel.
The fair also features experiential learning for guests, where campers showcase their fire-making skills and assist with milking farm animals, such as goats. Staffed lifeguards are on hand for a free swim in the reservoir.
“It’s a chance to get together to find out something happening in your own backyard,” said Tulio Browning, Farm and Wilderness’ Marketing Director.
Farm & Wilderness was founded in 1939 with its first camp, Timberlake, for boys. In its 86-year history, it has added camps for girls and non-binary campers, a day camp, a teenager program, and an all-gender camp on Lake Nineveh.
The organization was founded on Quaker principles by Kenneth and Susan Webb, the latter of whom served in the Vermont State Legislature from 1973 to 1980. The camp’s mission and values reflect the Quaker values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, and sustainability in one phrase: “purposeful work, joyful play, rugged outdoor living.”
Browning believes that these values are on display during the fair: “There’s joyful play on display at the fair. And there’s also that rugged outdoor living, you know, if it rains, there’s one tent, but generally out there just doing it, like starting fires, showing off skills, and getting wet on the Aqua shoot. And then there’s the purposeful work with kids that build and maintain these rides.”
After a few hours of enjoying rides, food stands — providing food cooked by the camps and local vendors — and other attractions, the nearly 1,000 attendees gather for a square dance in a big field. After the square dance, the group gathers for a large bonfire, where campers show off their work of the past months as the flames rise over 20 feet tall in the air.
Parking is at the Killington Skyship, and Farm & Wilderness will run shuttles regularly throughout the day from the site of the fair on their property to the lot.
The camps take pride in their sustainable living and hard work. Campers live in wooden cabins with three walls, do their own chores, and have no access to technology — they can only contact their parents through letter-writing!
“[It] gives kids a sense of authentic, purposeful work, which is really more and more rare these days, in the era of AI, and the era of working with your hands diminishing, Farm & Wilderness is a place where people learn to the value of washing their own dishes and taking care of the animals that they have on-site and building cabins,” said Browning.
In the early days of the Farm & Wilderness camps, Kenneth Webb would bring campers to the local Rutland Fair at the end of the summer. However, one summer in the early 1940s, the fair was canceled due to wartime rationing and general scarcity. In turn, the camps decided to hold their own fair and invited the local community, and the tradition has continued.
In recent years, the fair has seen its share of difficulties. The fair was held for the first time in five summers in 2024. Camp did not run in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and operated with Covid-19 protocols in the summers of 2021 and 2022 that made hosting the fair impossible. In 2023, the organization reckoned with the extreme flooding in Vermont and an outbreak of norovirus at their camps. This hiatus was longer than expected for the organization, but the event’s return last summer proved successful.
As Browning sees it, the event is the quintessential Vermont experience of DIY fun in the outdoors.
“It’s a chance to see this old-fashioned, make-your-own-fun at work because that really is what Vermont is, in many ways, about. People are attracted to Vermont because it is a green, rolling, and pleasant place, and it also has a cultural character of ‘let’s get it done ourselves.’ Let’s, you know, roll up our sleeves and make some fun. And that’s what they would see with these kids and with these rides, a community coming together to entertain, to delight.”
Editor’s note: Alec Strum is a journalism student at Syracuse University and a camp counselor at Farm & Wilderness Camps.
