Who We Are
While the community farm’s vision is still in the start-up phase, eventually we will focus our programming around therapeutic animals, nature, and mindfulness to increase the well-being of visitors. Check out Our Timeline and Future Services to learn more.
The farm is an inclusive place, a safe haven, and a community for you to focus on your own self-awareness and growth. We believe that when you can heal yourself, we can heal the planet together.
Vermont Community Farm’s mission is to make wellness practical, accessible, and affordable to humans by offering opportunities to help improve their physical and mental well-being.
Mission
Values
Sustainable • Community-Focused • Therapeutic • Inclusivity • Environmental • Educational • Mindfulness • Healing • Local • Health • Outdoors • Trauma-Informed • Permaculture • Organic • Healing • Fun
Samara Anderson
Founder & Executive Director
Professionally, Samara is an Attorney licensed in both Vermont and New York, 200-hour Registered Yoga Medicine Teacher (currently completing her 500-hour Certified Yoga training), MBSR Instructor-In-Training, and a social entrepreneur teaching mindfulness to stressed professionals. Her long-term goal for many years has been to create a non-profit community wellness farm in Vermont, using therapeutic animals, nature and mindfulness to increase the well-being of all beings (because the health of humans is intimately connected to the well-being of the planet). She discovered yoga and meditation in 2003 when she graduated from Vermont Law School and was in a stressful and busy commercial litigation law firm based in Manhattan, New York. Her legal work has evolved from complex commercial litigation in New York to public servant with the State of Vermont in a technical compliance and process improvement role at the Department of Children and Families.
Now, her focus is on how to integrate mindfulness into stressed professions to provide them with the tools to regulate their nervous systems to a place of lower stress and increased happiness and calm.
Samara Anderson is a small-town Minnesota farm girl, who has always wanted to spread her wings and explore the world, but she is happy to finally put roots down and call Vermont her home as she explores manifesting her dream of creating a wellness community farm. From a young age on the farm, she was intimately aware of the healing power of nature and animals, but it took a bit longer to stumble into powerfully insightful mindfulness practices.
Samara’s interests: yoga • mindfulness • hiking • backpacking • camping • gravel riding • running • backcountry and cross country skiing • animals • self-improvement • shamanism • community-building • kindness • gratitude
Kate Greisdorf
Social Media, Website, and Market Research Intern
Kate is in her third year at the University of Vermont with a major in Environmental Studies and a minor in Integrative Health and Wellness Coaching. She is passionate about ensuring everyone has autonomy over their own health, especially those vulnerable to environmental hazards and the effects of climate change. She shares the vision of VCF with Samara and is eager to be working on this dream. Kate is a competitive olympic weightlifter and is president of the UVM Olympic Weightlifting Club. During the academic year, she serves as a Peer Leader at the UVM Career Center and the administrative assistant at Gund Institute for Environment.
She grew up in Bethesda, Maryland for the first 15 years of her life and then moved to Danvers, Massachusetts. Since moving, Kate has grown to love and appreciate all New England has to offer. She thoroughly enjoys going to school in Vermont and enjoys getting to learn about the state more and more each year she is living there.
Kate’s interests: environmental justice • environmental health • community-building and strengthening • weightlifting • outdoor adventures • hammocking • veganism • coaching
Christina Andrle
Board Member
Bio coming soon!
Megan Campbell
Board Member
Bio coming soon!