“How will our children know who they are if they don’t know where they came from?”

- John Steinbeck

I had the pleasure of spending a recent afternoon at Watson Farm, located in Jamestown, Rhode Island.  My youngest daughter is enamored with sheep and lambs, and learning that Watson Farm was holding a sheep shearing my wife and I decided to attend and bring the family along.

There is nothing particularly grand about  the farm itself, but it is rather a typical New England farm. In many respects, though, this is grand in and of itself, given how few small farms are actually left in New England.  What was particularly interesting about this farm, beyond its quaint, rustic beauty, was that it offered a “whole” view of why wool is an important product to us.  People were able to see a sheep being sheared, the wool being spun into thread, and the thread being woven on a loom.  Most children don’t get the opportunity to see this and have no idea how raw materials are farmed and transformed into those things we use today.

I had never been to Watson Farm before, and for however unfamiliar it was, it was just as I expected it to be.  Certainly not pristine as some of the more well known New England farms are, but in its rustic state it seemed more real than the others.  This is, after all, a working farm and I suspect that working farmers have little time to make their properties attractive to tourists – there is already enough cows to milk, crops to plant, and sheep to shear.

An old farmhouse, barn, and other outbuildings stand on the property.  A short walk to the west crested a hill and sloped downward through hay fields and pastures towards the West Passage of Narragansett Bay.  Farm equipment, some antique, dot the property and offer an interesting contrast of color to the weathered barn and farmhouse.  The farm is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays from 1 to 5pm.

© 2010 James A. Fraser