• Courtesy Of Caleb Kenna/Vermont Land Trust
• Chuda Dhaurali of Dhaurali Goats

Sitting in the kitchen of his family's Colchester farmhouse last week, Chuda Dhaurali recalled how, in 2013, he, his wife, Gita, and their two young daughters moved onto the 220-acre former dairy farm owned by the Vermont Land Trust.

For the first year, the Dhauralis juggled the fledgling Vermont Goat Collaborative — raising meat goats for the new American community — with their jobs as a restaurant cook and housekeeper. Originally refugees from Bhutan, they had spent 17 years in Nepalese camps before arriving in Vermont in 2009.

Back then, a future in which the family took ownership of what would become known as Pine Island Community Farm "did not seem possible," Chuda said.

But on March 15, the couple, whose business is now called Dhaurali Goats, purchased the conserved farm for its agricultural value of $400,000 from the Vermont Land Trust.

Chuda said he approached the land trust about the purchase about a year ago. "I thought, It feels like we can do it now," he said.

The Dhauralis have grown the operation to sell a yearly total of about 500 goats, which are selected live by customers and then processed in an on-site, state-inspected slaughter facility. They have added a small flock of sheep and plan to start a meat bird operation.

The family put down $150,000 and took out a loan from Opportunities Credit Union, Chuda said. Gita continues to work off-farm, bringing home a reliable paycheck and benefits.

"I've been working at it a long time," Chuda said. Asked how it felt to own the farm, he said, "I cannot explain it. It's very good."

The Dhauralis aren't the only family to make a recent transition from working on Pine Island Community Farm to owning their own. Théogène Mahoro and his wife, Hyacinthe Mahoro Ayingeneye, also moved there in 2013 and built a successful chicken business. Last August, they bought their own five-acre farm in Williston, with two houses and two barns, for $495,000. Support came from the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board's Farm & Forest Viability Program, the Vermont Economic Development Authority, the Vermont Land Trust, and the Intervale Center's farm business planning group.

• Melissa Pasanen
• Théogène Mahoro of Mama Farm

The couple originally came to the United States as refugees from Rwanda. Since moving to Williston in December, they have been hard at work expanding their Mama Farm to add meat goats, laying chickens and a three-quarter-acre plot where they will cultivate tomatoes, African eggplant, hot peppers and cabbage.

Mahoro still works at Rhino Foods in Burlington. "It's a lot of jobs," he said last week, standing outside a barn filled with about 80 goats and kids.

Their years farming at Pine Island helped Mahoro and his wife pave the way to buying their own farm, he said. He is happy with the new farm's central location and pastures where he can rotate chickens and goats.

Abby White, the Vermont Land Trust's vice president of engagement, said the aim of Pine Island Community Farm was always "to help incubate farm businesses and eventually transfer the land to the farmers." The land trust will continue to run the eight acres of community garden plots located there, which are tended by about 75 families who hail originally from 10 countries.

White described the Colchester farm as a unique property whose location made it both subject to development pressure and close to where many new Americans lived. The project was the first time that the land trust protected agricultural land by holding ownership and partnering with farmers.

The positive outcome is that "now there are two families who own their own farms," White said.

Chuda Dhaurali said he spoke recently with Mark Freudenberger, husband of the late Karen Freudenberger, a tireless supporter of the new American farming community who was instrumental in the establishment and early growth of Pine Island Community Farm before her untimely death in 2016.

"He's very happy," Dhaurali said of Freudenberger. "He said, 'For Karen, this was the dream.'"