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Growing season has returned! Celebrate this yearly shift in West Redding at New Pond Farm's Founders' May Fair on May 15 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The farm's verdant pastures and early spring gardens are the setting for Maypole dancing, Morris dancing (English country dancing,) sheep shearing, sheepdog demonstrations, and horse-drawn hayrides. Meet and learn about calves, goats, chickens and roosters. Learn how to judge a dairy cow. Meet a beekeeper and get a peek at the residents of the farm's observation hive. Enjoy toe-tapping fiddle music and a delicious lunch, and then try your hand at some natural crafts like fleece creatures, May baskets and more. At 2:30 a special guest, Master Falconer Bryan Bradley, shows off his magnificent live owls, hawks, and falcons. Admission is $5 per person or $20 per family.
West Redding's New Pond Farm is a 102-acre property, which was donated to the Redding Land Trust by actress Carmen Mathews, who died in 1995. Her acting career spanned 55 years and included roles in the films "Butterfield 8" and "Sounder." According to the New York Times, in 1983, she started a summer camp for disadvantaged city children at New Pond Farm. This and her environmentalist activism earned her the United Nations designation as one of Connecticut's outstanding women of 1987.
In 2007 New Pond Farm was designated a Connecticut Dairy Farm of Distinction, and the farm's Native American programs are enhanced by an authentically-recreated encampment. For more information, visit New Pond Farm's website.
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