sophie wallas rasmussen

Having grown up on a farm in Denmark, Sophie Wallas Rasmussen reminisces about the childhood freedom of bucolic open spaces from her past, and looks ahead to a future that promises a similar experience for the Bovina community in New York State, where she and her husband have recently opened a Montessori school.

Where in the world did you spend your childhood, Sophie?

Most of my childhood years, I alternated between three places in Denmark: Copenhagen, our family farm in the South of Funen (a Danish island), and an old boarding school near a mid-sized Danish town on Zealand (another Danish island). I’ve also spent a few years living outside of Chester, United Kingdom and in Rumson, New Jersey (USA), both of which left indelible impressions on me, and where I solidified my English at an early age.

Is there a place from your childhood that remains very special to you?

I would probably say our 85-acre family farm in the South of Funen, as I loved the natural surroundings and the freedom to explore the outdoor world so much. As kids, we would spend hours all by ourselves, going to the nearby beaches, fields and forests, or visit neighboring farms and their animals/orchards. It is also where you can trace our paternal family lineage back 10+ generations, so there is a special connection to the land and the community there. Our cousins, second cousins and paternal grandparents all lived nearby, so we grew up very close. It was such an innocent and happy time in our family, and it shaped my hopes and dreams for a farm-life for my own future family.

Tell us about Bovina, and how you came to live there.

This is very much tied to question 2! I started dating my now husband and co-founder of the school David back in 2006, while I was living in London and he in Copenhagen. We realized that none of us wanted to live in our current places, and so the idea of New York City came up, as I wanted to try and return to the US, since I lived in New Jersey all those years ago. Thankfully, David thought it an excellent idea, as he was ready for an adventure too, and so we moved there in 2008.

We set out to make a life in Brooklyn, NY, and soon after we had our first born daughter in 2009. I remember giving birth and wanting as a newborn mother to leave the city immediately, and start a permaculture farm in the country. I think it was a big surprise for David back then, since I was the one who’d suggested NYC first! Suddenly all of my old dreams of family farm-life came rushing back to me, after years of living as a young adult in big cities. It took us (only!) 10 years and a son to finally take the plunge to move full-time to upstate NY. I think for David particularly, it was important to know where we were going before leaving our home in the city, which is why it took so long for us to move, as we didn’t even know this area of the world existed.

We started going north on weekend trips to the Catskills Mountains around late 2016. I had heard about the Northwestern part of the Catskills (where Bovina is situated) through friends and I'd read articles about the area. I was intrigued by the bucolic landscape, the low-density population, and the farm-to-table focus, something that reminded me of the farm landscape where I grew up. I loved the idea of the small town life as well, and an overall slower pace. David and I were also increasingly getting fascinated with the aspect of self-sufficiency, and the area was much more affordable in terms of property. After visiting various towns in the Catskills, we finally went to Bovina for the first time in 2017, staying at an Airbnb for a weekend. People kept mentioning it to us, so it seemed like we had to go. While there, David had a great first experience at the local general store, while I had a strong, visceral and emotional experience just being in the area. For me, it was like coming home - again. I’ve only ever had that in the South of Funen. I told David that we needn’t look further; this was the town we should settle in. Shortly after this, we found and closed on a piece of land, and we started building our homestead. We moved full-time up here in the summer of 2019, when the house was almost done.

Bovina is a small town founded in 1820 by Scottish and English settlers, which today has around 600 inhabitants spread out on approximately 45 square miles of land. It is notable for its beautiful, hilly scenery that consists of farms, fields, forests and water ways (ponds, lakes, rivers), interspersed by small hamlets (villages). Our elevation is around 1700-3500 ft, so we get a lot of snow in the winter, which is known to last for almost six months of the year. Our other seasons are therefore very short, but each of them very, very beautiful. It can get hot in the summer days, but the summer nights are thankfully cool, and the waterways offer wonderful swimming opportunities. We are on the longitude level with Madrid, so the winters here are much brighter than in my home country, Denmark, where it typically gets dark very quickly. The area is known for its farm history, and for attracting tourists that enjoy the outdoors. There is a lot of hunting, fishing, camping, kayaking, hiking, skiing, and other outdoor pursuits in the area, and so the businesses in the area cater a lot to weekenders and summer visitors, many of which travel from New York City and other boroughs. It is 3-3.5 hours north of New York City.

What are your hopes and dreams for Bovina Montessori School?

Gosh, we have so many, both for the sake of our own little family, and for the wider community.!We are the first ones ever to offer a private school option for the kids in the county, and the first school to return to Bovina for 60 years, after the last village school closed in 1961. We hope that our school will bring more prosperity and economic development to an otherwise neglected county.

It is therefore important to us to make this an affordable opportunity for the families that live here, while at the same time creating a world-class education, coupled with our rural location. We live in such a beautiful, natural setting, so our hope is to obviously guide the students into a joy of learning and preserving the natural world, which they hopefully can transfer into their work and livelihood as adults.

It is also our hope and dream to fulfill Dr. Montessori’s recommendations of placing a school on a farm. Our school is deliberately set on an old, 1800s dairy farm with 50 acres at our disposal (and another 350-400 acres of public land around us), and we consider ourselves therefore not just a school, but that we are building a fully-functioning farm, including  gardens, orchards, and livestock. Our dream is demonstrate the benefit of marrying the two, for a more holistic learning experience. Outdoor learning is a critical part of this, and so the students spend hours outdoors every day, rain or shine, as part of their schooling.

Currently, we have three classrooms supporting toddlers, primary, and elementary. It is our hope to keep building the school to encompass secondary school as well, so the students can finish their high school diploma here. It is our hope, with time, to do boarding for the upper secondary students, as Dr. Montessori envisioned. I went to boarding school myself for five years of my secondary schooling, and it was some of my best school years, so I am particularly passionate about creating that experience for others.

We are so happy to know that your school possesses a copy of our Phonetic Planet books! Do you have some favorite books from your childhood that you can recommend to us?

Thank you for your beautiful books! We love books and are building our school library, to which yours have been added.

Being Danish, I of course grew up with H.C. Andersen’s tales, and they really left a deep impression on me. Many of his stories have such a strong moral, spiritual, and socioeconomic aspect to them, being that he grew up incredibly poor and rose to prominence in society, while observing all aspects of human life and death in the different class systems. The original tales can sometimes be slightly scary for a younger crowd, but there are many age-appropriate written versions today, and so I’d definitely recommend those, as they touch upon many important life lessons, yet written in a magical world. Ultimately, one should always read his words, which carry such poetic weight.

I also loved another Danish author, whose work has become more available abroad as well; Ole Lund Kirkegaard. He was able to show through his work the dynamics between a child’s world and the adult world, and he had such a warm and funny way of writing about the contrasts between what is considered acceptable and the impossible! I would recommend his books too. My favorites were Hodja from Pjort, Otto is a rhinoceros, and Rubber-Tarzan.

I loved Swedish-born Astrid Lindgren’s works as a child,  especially The Brothers Lionheart, Pippi Longstocking, and Ronia the Robber’s Daughter.

Lindgren was so ahead of her time, and had such a great grasp of the mind of a child. She particularly portrayed little girls as strong and independent thinking, living in unusual conditions, which was not always the case in books of my youth. There are so many to choose from in her body of work.

I grew up in a Protestant family, and so I went to church every Sunday, with the Bible and especially Jesus’ teachings leaving a mark on me. The story of The Good Samaritan was one that particularly stood out for me, one of which informed many of my choices later in life. Again, there are books out there that retell the biblical stories for a child audience, and I think they still have a value in today’s society. I've read the stories to my children at bedtime, and they really enjoy them.

Finally, I grew up loving the French comic book series Asterix, with Asterix and Obelix traveling all over Europe and beyond, exploring different cultures in ancient times, and learning about human beings. The humor in those books is wonderful and I remember wanting to travel to all of the places they went!

Our sincere thanks to Sophie for sharing her personal and professional journey with us. We wish her and David the very best of luck with the school, and encourage you to learn more about it at www.bovinamontessori.com and on Instagram at @bovinamontessori .