Last week, Vermont’s New American farm community lost one of its most devoted advocates when Karen Freudenberger died. The founder of Pine Island Community Farm in Colchester suffered from a “preexisting and known heart condition,” her husband, Mark Freudenberger, tells Seven Days. She died peacefully in her sleep, he adds, but “it happened maybe 20 years too soon.”
Freudenberger moved to Vermont in 2009, where she made a name for herself helping refugees and other New Americans living in Chittenden County produce traditional, homegrown meats and vegetables. In 2013, she began working with Bhutanese refugees Chuda Dhaurali and Tika Dulal, who cofounded the Vermont Goat Collaborative to bring fresh goat meat to New American tables.
In partnership with the Vermont Land Trust — which conserved the Colchester farm for agricultural use in 2012 — and the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Freudenberger worked with Dhaurali, Dulal and dozens of other new Vermonters to grow the farm into a multi-strand enterprise.
The 230-acre site now includes a state-inspected goat slaughter facility and a 17-acre vegetable garden where more than 60 families tend individual plots to stock their larders. Pine Island is also home to productive beehives and a poultry operation that fattened and sold about 2,000 birds (most of them retired layer hens and roosters) in 2015.
Mark Freudenberger says his wife’s work at the farm will continue. “It’s business as usual — at least as much as possible,” he says. “Karen had put in place strong sustainability mechanisms, and all parties are fully committed to the farm.”
Freudenberger donated her body to science, and her family will not hold a church service. Memorial celebrations were still being planned at press time. Check the online version of this story for updates and for opportunities for friends and community members to donate gifts in Freudenberger’s honor.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Remembering a Farm Founder”
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This article appears in Dec 7-12, 2016.
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Oh no! Karen was an absolutely amazing human being on so many levels. What a tremendous loss. My deepest condolences to her family.
Karen you will most definitely be missed. Thank you so much for the amazing legacy you have left behind.
I am stunned and overwhelmed with sorrow at this news- her presence was a source of inspiration from the time I first met her at Bryn Mawr College to rediscovering her nearby in VT at a recent gathering of Bryn Mawr alums at Pine Island Farm. My heart goes out to her family and friends and to the many who have been touched by her presence through visionary work here and abroad.