Round the Bend Farm (RTB), a Center for Restorative Community, located in Dartmouth, Massachusetts is a working farm and educational non-profit. We are a living laboratory that cultivates, educates, and empowers people of all ages. We are devoted to the global paradigm shift toward hope and abundance by valuing diversity, modeling nature, and redefining wealth.
There are always many hands and hearts involved in anything meaningful and Round the Bend Farm (RTB), a Center for Restorative Community, is no exception! Michael & Margie Baldwin, Founders of the Marion Institute, and Leslie & Rutgers (Rucky) Barclay were instrumental in the inception of RTB and played a significant role in ourstory. In 2007, the two couples joined forces when they found the farm and named it Round the Bend Farm; investing in the land and hiring farmers, including RTB Co-Founder Geoff Kinder.
Geoff and RTB Co-Founder Desa Van Laarhoven (then the Executive Director for the Marion Institute) had a dream of creating a working and living model of restorative living in the northeast, inspired in part by their friends at Rancho Mastatal in Costa Rica. Incredible visionaries themselves, Michael & Margie Baldwin visited Rancho Mastatal to experience part of Desa & Geoff’s inspiration, and encouraged them to manifest their vision at RTB. In 2008, Desa & Geoff started living at RTB, and Desa’s brother, Shaun Van Laarhoven, arrived on the scene as RTB’s first official volunteer. Over the course of six years, Shaun made a career transition from a healthcare worker in Boston to a farm volunteer, and ultimately to his current position as RTB’s Executive Chef & Kitchen Director.
RTB was BLESSED in 2013 to have Ellen & Duncan McFarland join the team as major financial supporters who wholeheartedly believed in the vision that was transpiring. Through their Bromley Charitable Trust, Ellen & Duncan purchased the 39-acre property for the greater vision of RTB, led by Co-Founders Desa & Geoff. A Center for Restorative Community was born! In one fell swoop, the farm went from a place owned by one couple to a place owned and farmed by a non-profit in perpetuity. This work could never have been done without the many, many folks who contributed their love, time, energy, and ideas.
Desa left her post as Executive Director of the Marion Institute in 2014, “to follow her bliss” (as Michael Baldwin says), and became the First Executive Director of RTB. RTB received its non-profit status on July 7, 2015, and took a leap from the comfy nest of its fiscal sponsor, the Marion Institute. Later in 2015, after a special blessing for RTB’s Learning Center, the foundation for the incredible buildings was poured. The Learning Center is a testament to the power of collaborative effort, and a long-held collective dream made manifest. In 2017, the Learning Center was completed and it now pulses with life and possibility, and our educational programming is growing like a weed!
In 2017, RTB formally acquired 55-acres of Ocean View Farm, located directly next door to RTB’s 39-acre parcel, protecting that land from development and continuing its life as a working farm. 
Again, this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Ellen & Duncan, along with contributions from the USDA and many individual donors (along with the help of DNRT and Buzzards Bay Coalition). RTB’s original property would continue to be education-centered with demonstration plots, permaculture, animal production, small-scale grazing, and educational workshops and events,while “RTB East” would expand our realm into focused, sustainable food production, as we aimed to foster greater diversity in our community: of people, perspectives, initiatives and biology. In 2020, RTB East became the home to our Manifest Love fields and greenhouse. Today it is also home to our agroforestry orchard and a new irrigation well.
Speaking of Manifest Love, no one will ever forget 2020, which brought an unexpected health pandemic, COVID-19. While the crisis brought feelings of vulnerability and fear, and was exacerbated with racial strife and political tensions, it also shone a light on new ways of living in hope and in love, and meaningful opportunities presented themselves. Manifest Love was born
out of this crisis- a collaboration to bring love, education, and healthy food to families in need in New Bedford. In partnership with the YWCA Southeastern MA, Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Y.O.U.) and NorthStar Learning Centers, RTB was able to distribute CSA-type food shares toapproximately 125 families per week. In 2022, we acquired our mobile component of the Manifest Love program, the Manifest Love Food Truck, and the 1st edition of our Manifest Love Cookbook was completed. And in 2023, Sacred Birthing Village became another one of our amazing partners. As of 2025, we are packing shares up for 150 families every week from May through December.
We were fortunate to grow our farm to 115-acres in 2020 with another major land acquisition. We recognized a special opportunity to expand RTB’s farmland and potential with Everbearing Farm, 21-acres located across the street from our RTB East property. Ellen & Duncan and the Bromley Charitable Trust stepped up yet again, purchasing Everbearing Farm on behalf of RTB.
RTB is now 115-acres (across four properties) with 3 farmhouses, 3 barns, a mechanic shop, a commercial kitchen, offices and classroom space, a yurt, 7 greenhouses, 6 tiny houses, a bathhouse and a wetu. We have installed 5 solar arrays; planted a 500+ tree agroforestry orchard; hosted two Wampanoag Powwows alongside Annawon Weeden, Kitty Hendricks & Toodie Coombs; donated over 150,000 lbs of food (valued at approximately $644,000) through our Manifest Love program; hit the road (literally) with our Manifest Love Food Truck; created an Endowment Fund “The RTB Hope and Abundance Fund” and have reached well over 21,000 people through educational experiences at the farm!
Ourstory continues to unfold…
