“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau
Redefining Wealth
Prosperity is not constrained to material goods or dollars. We see wealth as equitable access to all that makes life meaningful. RTB continuously seeks to cultivate shared abundance and communal well-being.
At RTB, we view “wealth” as more than our monetary and material possessions. While those things have inherent value, we like to look at “restorative wealth” as a culmination of all aspects of our lives that money can’t buy: good health and quality of life; deepening connections to self, community and nature; loving your work; being a part of something bigger than your individual self; time to experiment, learn and be; and the presence of a robust gift-sharing economy. We seek to create an environment at RTB where these characteristics of a wealthy life are available to our land-based community: our farm team, our agripreneurs and edupreneurs, and our extended family. Through tiny house living and treating food as medicine, we demonstrate that conscious living is wealth in itself, and through our agripreneurs & edupreneurs we share this wealth with the surrounding community as well.
We believe that equity is critical to redefining wealth and spreading restorative wealth. As a living laboratory that empowers people of all ages, we are continually testing models for living and working that are also accessible beyond RTB. We believe that when any group of people is suffering, locally or globally, it creates inequity and suffering for all. Our goal is to create balance and to be part of a system that feeds positivity, love, equity (and healthy food!) into the greater community. At RTB, we look at economic systems as ecosystems, where connections are inherent and waste is a resource. Our food scraps and weeds from the garden are fed to the pigs and chickens or composted. In addition, our team has created deep relationships with businesses that help to feed the pigs with bi-products from beer brewing. The value of our Center for Restorative Community is in the generation of different forms of capital that are invested back into the farm and the community, having a regenerative and sustainable impact.
Through collaborative work, material and financial capital is produced. In 2017, the synergy of skills and experience held by the RTB team saw its greatest expression in the creation of our Learning Center. Our Learning Center features handcrafted, artisan detailing throughout, including cedar tree baseboards and entryway posts and trims, a carefully handmade stone facade in the solarium, and recycled landfill liner roof shingles. This building is an expression and investment of both material and financial capital that will continue to have an impact for generations to come. Together we’ve sent ripples of change through our community—we’ve cut waste at urban eateries, gleaned veggies for food production, conserved land, supported scientific research and more. We have continued to redefine wealth to mean a life fully lived, where time is precious, collaboration is instinctive, and sufficiency is available to all. This communal, cultural, and spiritual capital is an emergent property of restorative communities such as RTB.
Redefining Wealth
Defining wealth is very personal and situational. At RTB, we view wealth as a culmination of all the things in our lives that money can’t buy:
- Good Health
- Quality of Life
- Deepening Connections to Self, Community & Nature
- Gift/Sharing Economy
- Equity for All
When any group of people is suffering, locally or globally, it creates inequity and suffering for all. Our goal is to create balance and to be part of a system that feeds positivity and equality into the community.
What is your Personal Wealth Statement:
I am wealthy when…?
What is Success?
– Time as being a precious resource
– Collaboration
Spreading Restorative Wealth
For our team…
In 2024, after a few years of planning and building, we now have a state of the art bathhouse to serve our little community of teammates. With a serious affordable housing crisis in our area, a number of our teammates live right here on the farm in our tiny house community. The bathhouse (which has two showers, one bathtub, two composting toilets, a full-service laundry area, and a sauna) helps create a healthier ecosystem for those teammates, and all of our teammates really, redefining wealth for our team. Many jobs on the farm are taxing to the body and mind, and we see this as an important step in taking care of our bodies, taking care of our health… After all, a healthy team contributes to a healthy organization (and a healthy world!). While the bathhouse is a place that RTB teammates can utilize, it will also be integral for our future programming.
In line with our mission, we prioritized supporting local artisans and trade-workers to complete the bathhouse. Local tile installers and stonemasons were brought in for vanities, showers, and countertops. Like the rest of the farm, we wanted the bathhouse to include an influx of funds into our local community’s economy – a different way to give back and support the wonderful area RTB is based in. In addition, we had teammates elbow-deep in work on the bathhouse, from construction to decoration. RTB’s Resident Builder (and General Contractor) Tyler See put so much wonderful time, effort, and work into making the bathhouse what it is today. Tyler carried the long project through from start to finish and dedicated countless hours through all four seasons to bring this project home! We are ecstatic at its completion, and grateful to all of the hands and hearts that were able to touch this project and carry it out to fruition with us.
and beyond RTB…
RTB’s mission of sustainability and restoration (and redefining wealth) extends not only to our land, our plants, our team, our surroundings, but also to farmers in the community who work the land, and the many leaders and healers that are caring for our communities. We offer our space to non-profit community leaders and their cohorts on a sliding scale, in a way that fully supports them, allowing them to feel loved, appreciated, seen, and heard. We want these guests to feel nourished and taken care of because the work that they are doing in our communities can be exhausting. Our goal: to sustain their physical health by feeding them nutrient-dense food from the local food system, while nourishing their mental and emotional health by giving them a peaceful, grounding environment to utilize for team-building activities, communication workshops, and other organizational exercises. We encourage them to share in our mission by providing tours of the farm that get them interacting with the land and learning about sustainability. This is one small way for us to spread restorative wealth to our larger community!
PURCHASING POWER
RTB walks our talk by supporting local farms and businesses which align with our mission. Buying from, and supporting, local businesses generates approximately 70% more local economy activity than big box retail! Through our everyday expenditures, we think about who we can support and how to embody our mission through action by being more sustainable and recirculating funds in our local economy. This extends to all of our purchases. To take a step backward, before we even decide to make a purchase, we ask ourselves if we need to make a purchase at all?
We try to apply the “5 R’s” of zero-waste living into our decision- making: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle. We are always trying to minimize our negative impacts on the environment.
