An Interview with Scott and Lisa Carrino, of Pompanuck Farm
Out past Cambridge, in Washington County, on a quiet back road that straddles the Vermont border, lies an oasis for the human spirit. Known as Pompanuck Farm, it is sometimes referred to as an eco-retreat. The unique buildings of cord-wood, straw-bale, yurt and green roofs, almost appear to be something out of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. It’s hard to nail down exactly what Pompanuck Farm is. Part children’s fun camp; it can be an art venue or music showcase; or an idyllic setting for a green wedding, or family reunion. We sat down with residents and hosts Scott and Lisa Carrino, to find out what goes on under the green roofs at Pompanuck Farm.
EL: What is the name “Pompanuck: derived from?
PF: This piece of land was known as “Pumpkin Hook” from way back. When we purchased the land, we did some research about the area. Apparently Pompanuck was a Pequot Indian chief from the Connecticut River Valley in the 1600’s. The people were tired of warring with neighboring tribes, so they migrated to this area to seek a more peaceful existence. The Pompanuck name shows up again when the Dutch arrived in the area. They really did not know how to live in the wilderness, so the Indians, now know as the Pompanucks, taught them how to survive. The Dutch named the creek running through the property “Pumpkin Hook” as hook means small stream. So that is the name that became associated with this highland area where we are located. It was really inspiring for us to look at this history and find out that what we are trying to do here is to live in harmony with nature and with people, and that was happening here a long time ago as well.
EL: So it turns out that this place, both now and in the past, is a place where people can find peace!
PF: Well we just found ourselves here, in a way. We weren’t necessarily seeking peace, but we were following our intuition, and it found us. The project we started here began with three couples, all who were teachers, artists, and what the original idea was to live together and live off the land, and build structures that were in harmony with nature. Initially there was this idea all of us living together and it hasn’t quite worked out that way. There was discussion of being an intentional community, but it never really worked out that way. The other owners visit on occasion, for events and family reunions, but we’re the primary residents and caretakers of the property. It’s a more loosely based community of friends commonly owned with this purpose of having a place where we can teach.
EL: The Buildings here at Pompanuck are certainly unique. The one we are sitting in is round and made of cordwood, and has a green roof. You’ve got several yurts on the property, and even a couple of buildings made of straw bales. Are these structures part of some intentional plan?
PF: Were these buildings intentional from the beginning? Not really. The inspiration for this building came from a book. When I lived in Connecticut, I was involved in the building trades, while there was a building boom going on, and it was all about how fast and how cheap. That really didn’t strike me very well. Lisa was in a book store and picked up this little book, on a cordwood construction technique. She wrote a note in it, “For your inspiration.” Well, I became obsessed by it! I was able to meet the fella that wrote the book, and his goal was to try to get this technique back into practice. This is an old technique. One of the things we were thinking about back then was local materials. So this building itself, almost all the materials, the beams the wood for the walls, the glass bottles, it all came from within a 25 mile radius. The window actually came from a building in New York City, but there are recycled. In 1990 we were thinking about the idea that materials for building can be acquired locally, and should be acquired locally, so we’re not shipping things 3000 miles to use Doug Fir, for instance, and it’s much less expensive. All these logs came from the trees on the property. Our kids were little at the time, and they even helped strip the bark off of them. We were using a leaf spring, sharpened in the middle, and we’d strip an 80 foot log all at once. What we didn’t know at the time is that there were these fibers, like fiberglass that we were releasing from the bark and they get caught up in our clothes. It was a disaster!
One of the things that was important to us was that we weren’t creating an isolationist or survivalist mentality here; it’s not who we are. This building in particular, we had a lot of support from the local community. We developed wonderful relationships with the people at Hubbard Hall, and the Village Co-op, and so when we built this building, a lot of folks from the community came out to help and support our efforts, much like an Amish barn raising event. People put a lot of nice energy into it.
These windows came from a NYC apartment house that I lived in. They were changing out the windows, and these were going to be landfilled, so they gave us the windows for free. We rented a truck, and bought restoration grade hanging systems, and built storm windows for them, so even with all the cash we put out to get them here and fix them up, it would have only bought us two new windows. So we saved these windows from the landfill, and got decent windows for this structure. All of the doors are from other buildings, and the toilets, the sinks, all are recycled from some other place.
There’s also the fact that using old things from somewhere else gives the building immediate age, immediate history. I mean, people have been looking through these windows for decades. The doors – how many people have walked through these doors before? There’s a history that is immediately imbued in a new building when you recycle things.
EL: That brings up another interesting thing about what you are doing here. You are really helping make changes in peoples' lives, for the better. Can you tell me how that plays a part here at Pompanuck?
PF: For us, we think of it as a mentoring responsibility, that we‘ve made a lot of mistakes in our lives; some of them are more serious than others, and yet, this gives us an opportunity to share on some level, the things that we’ve learned from our mistakes, in terms of relationships, or in terms of relationship with society. And so for us, we don’t approach any of these programs that we do with an agenda; that this is the way you should things, or your life will be better if you do this; it’s more, for us, a process of listens, and seeing where communication can take place, where the teaching moments are. We don’t necessarily have a philosophy or a dogma, where we say “This is how it must be done,” and the people realize, “wow, this person is here for me.” SO I feel that the teaching comes from what they are asking for and we can fit the bill, we do it, and if we can’t, we ask for help form others. It comes from that value really listening to people, and seeing what they’re asking for. It’s not really what we think is right for the situation.
EL: So, what type of people come to Pompanuck?
PF: We’ve made a lot of contacts with youth programs in the region. A lot of the kids have heard about Pompanuck, and they actually ask if they can come and participate in things that we do. Then we were contacted by the Washington County mentoring program and then they asked us if we’d take on some of their kids that had to do community service hours. And then they asked us to take on adults, who also had to do some kind of community service to avoid incarceration. We’ve also had a long time relationship with a St. John’s Orphanage in New York City, and those kids come up every year as a kind of retreat. It’s turned into a reward for those kids who behave and stay in school. They make the trip 3 or 4 times a year for 4 days. They realized that it’s not just frolicking in the woods; we have the ability here to mentor these young men and to inspire them, and so that came from realizing these boys are hungry for more than just being baby sat, that there’s a greater opportunity here. And then when we were asked to be part of the programs for the County, it came from the person who ran the mentoring for young people, moving into an alternative sentencing program, and saying, “hey, We should use Pompanuck for this program as well.” From there it went into drug court, which is for felony cases, and that lead to the directive for the offenders to take life skills workshops. Now, apparently, because of the support we offer, Washington County has a model program. The only requirement is that they learn something from outside their realm of experience. It could be baking, or tending the garden, tai-ji, or using some element of nature to ground themselves so that they can make better decisions. There’s different things we can offer here, and again, it’s without going: “Here’s this program, and here’s the steps…” It’s this idea of staying tuned in and being able to flow and dance with each individual to help THEM find their way. Not necessarily for them to find our way; because our way does not necessarily work for everybody.
EL: So you adapt your mentoring to the needs of each participant. I’m sure that a lot of the people that you deal with have never been treated this way. Whatever they gravitate towards, that is your signal to teach, right?
PF: Yes, even taking silent hikes in the woods. A lot of people who come here have never been in the woods before, and for them to go silently in the woods and ask themselves, “What is my experience?” We prime them to be aware of certain things, like “Hey, you might want to look at this, or, you might want to get a sense of how you feel safe in the woods, or, how do you feel about being silent?” And that’s a hard thing for a lot of people, is to be silent. So much of what we do is try to help people. And maybe that’s our agenda, is top help people learn how to observe, and how to listen, and to learn how to tune into their own wisdom, and not necessarily someone else’s wisdom. What’s the wisdom inside you?
EL: You are obviously making a positive impact in peoples’ lives. It must be life changing for you as well.
PF: Every single relationship that we have had with anyone who has come here for community service has been successful. For the most part, if we haven’t kept in contact with them we will be in contact with them. Again, they are people in our community, and it’s exciting for us to get to know all these people. We just love it. When we can do this kind of teaching and have it be something that everyone enjoys, it’s great. The only down side, is we don’t get paid enough for it. We don’t get a lot of time off, because a lot of stuff happens on weekends. We work ridiculously hard, but thank goodness, we love it, and we love each other, so it makes it all worth it!
Pompanuck Farm is located at 494 Chestnut Hill Road, outside of Cambridge, NY. Call 518-677-5552 or go to pompanuck.org for more information.
