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About a Better Selves Fellowship
A core value of the Better Selves fellowship is diversity in all its forms, and our staff and fellowship advisors work hard to ensure that each cohort of fellows is representative and inclusive – a value Knoll Farm has held throughout our twenty years of training and sustaining leaders.
Our Advisors
The Better Selves Fellowship advisors are a fantastic group of alumni and friends of Knoll Farm from across the country who serve a three-year term to help us constantly improve the program and help make it available to people who will get the most from it.
Those with contact information provided have also agreed to answer questions about the fellowship. Feel free to contact them.
Programming
The purpose of the Better Selves Fellowship is to provide a space for fellows to do their own independent work in a supportive, peaceful, inspiring landscape. Each fellow is arriving with a personal or professional goal or inquiry that they hope to engage during their stay. This is not a week of training and we do not teach; fellows are not asked to deliver anything as a result of the fellowship.
Peter Forbes provides coaching conversations for those interested every morning. We will organize a group conversation at the very beginning and at the very end of your fellowship to facilitate connection with others. We also make offerings of early morning yoga and time to fold in with the work on the farm during the day.
Otherwise, you will be given the space to create your own experience, rhythm and structure within the tapestry of our lives and work on the farm; although there will be plenty to experience here, the way you spend your time will be entirely of your own making during your fellowship.
Lodging and Facilities
The landscape of Knoll Farm is a 150-acre family farm with historic barns, organic orchards, produce gardens and pastures, and a farm store perched on a hill overlooking the Mad River Valley, near Waitsfield, Vermont. The entire farm is on the National Register of Historic Places
The Refuge consists of the farmstead at one end of the property, where you can find our office space for quiet work, our historic barn for dining, yoga, a library and hang out space, and our gardens and orchards. About 400 yards up a hill, accessible by grassy footpath or gravel road, is the Yurt Village, with accommodations, bath and shower, hot tub and fire circles at night.
Participants sleep on comfortable beds in in spacious yurts, located in an open forest glade at the top of a hill. Some participants prefer to share a room with others and some prefer a private yurt. The yurts have doors, windows, skylights and wooden floors with rug, table and chair and solar lighting.
Our beautiful cob and stone bath house, located centrally to the yurts, has hot showers and flush toilets, and is lit at night.
Meeting, work and hang-out areas include: an office with full internet and cell service, an historic barn with yoga floors, couches, library and music room, and a large yurt in the forest with meditation cushions and wood stove. All meals are served in the barn at one large, long table. The farm also has a small swimming pond, spaces for campfires and story circles and meditation, an outdoor bread oven for pizza nights, and hiking trails.
The village of Waitsfield is less than a mile away, with several restaurants, grocery stores, fabulous swimming holes, and stores for other needs.
Accessibility
Knoll Farm really is located on a knoll, and participants will walk on hilly terrain several times each day. The distance from one end of the campus to the other is about a quarter of a mile, up or downhill. It is necessary to be comfortable and able to walk on uneven ground. We do have a small solar powered vehicle to take people up and down the largest hill, but walking to and from the accommodations and bath house involves uneven ground and therefore good walking shoes are essential.
Food
We see food as the center of the experience of nourishment and community. Delicious and wholesome family-style meals will be provided at set times, three times a day. Tea and coffee are available all day. Breakfast and lunch are a buffet, and dinner is a little more formal, where we all come together at the family-style table. Shared meals together are a wonderful part of the experience. Our cuisine is mostly vegetarian and organic, with some meat sourced from our farm and nearby farms. We take care to accommodate special diets.
Office and Work Space
Our office has a shared conference room with wireless internet and good cell service for a quiet work environment should you need one. Our barn also has work space for writing and reading and internet. Most of the farm has good cell signal for AT&T and Verizon users.
Getting to Knoll Farm
Every accepted Better Selves Fellow is offered a cash travel allowance to help defray the cost of travel to and from Knoll Farm. Our closest airport is Burlington, about an hour from the farm. There is bus and rail service from East Coast cities to Montpelier or Waterbury Vermont, each about a half hour away. Wanderu.com is a good site to find fares and options. We provide transportation from the Burlington Airport on the day of your arrival.
Apply for a Better Selves Fellowship
We will be accepting applications until April 1. 54 applicants, 18 for each of our 3 one week sessions, will be offered a fellowship. All applicants will be notified of our decisions by April 24.
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