Howell Living History Farm

A Great Place for Kids of All Ages

[Update: 7/18/10 – good Asbury Park Press story: Young NJ farmers are cultivating a future ~~~ end update]

Saturday morning was spectacular, but a little too cool and windy for a bike ride, so I went for a combined “local walk” at the new D&R Greenway Dry Creek Trail (trail guide) and visit to nearby Howell Living History Farm. I ended up at Goat Hill. Howell Farm is an amazing place where history, nature, families, work, technology, discovery and fun come together.

Take a look (good info from the Mercer County Park Commission:

Howell Living History Farm is a time machine that takes you back to the year 1900 – a time when horses and buggies traveled the lanes of Pleasant Valley, and when farms were bordered by snake fences and Osage orange trees.

You were a farmer, then the kind that could drive a team of horses and plow a furrow with a walking plow. You could build a barn, or deliver a lamb, or bake a loaf of bread from wheat that you grew yourself. And you may have been remembered for the time you canned 200 quarts of tomatoes in a day, or the May Day you went to town in a one-horse sleigh.

Today, if it is time to harvest corn, you can ride up into a field in a horse drawn wagon, help us shock and pick corn, and return to the barnyard to help shell it, grind it, and bake it into cornbread. We invite you to help us plant, cultivate and harvest our crops, to care for our animals, to sweep our barn, to make soap, butter and ice cream, and of course to sit under the maple tree and talk about the future. (The future looks good, by the way. There are rumors of “combines”, horseless buggies and automatic ice cream makers.)

Stop by on Saturday – That’s when most of the neighbors do