Farmers don’t take a break when the weather is rainy, and neither does the Plum Hill School community, which flocked to Slough Farm in Katama Sunday for a wet but lively spring fundraiser.
“We had at least 80 attendees. I think we did 50 pony rides,” said Lisa Randall, the farm’s property and events manager. “We served all the food we made.”
A nonprofit educational farm established last year on Slough Cove Road, Slough Farm was the ideal host for Plum Hill’s event. The Waldorf-methods preschool encourages children to find joy in the natural world and in other living things, of which there were plenty on the farm.
Kids in tiny raincoats took turns donning hard helmets for a ride around the May pole aboard a patient horse named Dee Dee. A pair of young sheep drew a crowd to their enclosure, goats and Icelandic horses lured the hardiest visitors to their more distant paddocks, and six adolescent chickens huddled close to their food dish in an airy cage in the barn.
The pony was borrowed from Woodbe Farm in West Tisbury, but the rest of the livestock were Slough Farm residents.
“Our directive is to promote agriculture education, health and wellness on Martha’s Vineyard,” Ms. Randall said. “That’s a really broad mission,” and one of the ways the farm fulfills it is to host events for fellow Island nonprofits like Plum Hill School.
“We were giving them space to have this festival and supporting them so that they could raise awareness of their school and have the children come and have an educational experience,” she said.
On Sunday, the farm opened its barn for craft stations where children could tie-dye scarves, make butterflies from colorful wool, paint flower pots and then plant seedlings in them. Nimble-fingered adults helped the preschoolers create all-natural circlets of vines with fresh lilacs, cherry blossoms and other spring blooms.
The party included an extensive farm brunch prepared by chef Everett Whiting. The main dishes all came from Slough Farm, Ms. Randall said: lamb sausages, tenderloin of beef and frittata with farm eggs. Later in the season, there will be vegetables as well.
“We use everything we can from the farm,” she said. Any food not needed for farm events is donated locally, Ms. Randall added.
“We donate over 50 per cent of our produce and as much as we can of our meats,” she said.
After hosting a series of events over the winter, Ms. Randall and Slough Farm managers Julie and Laine Scott are working to develop more programming for the farm, Ms. Randall said, including partnering with Martha’s Vineyard Community Services on cooking classes for parents and teens. A website is in the works, with the online address sloughfarm.org already reserved.
“We’re doing it all at once,” Ms. Randall said. “We just moved in in July and we thought it was important to begin.”
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