Treleven in April

Happy Ewe

Barn at Night

Pregnant Ewes

This was a lovely and exciting month for us on the farm. Lambing season is always filled with beautiful moments and unexpected sorrows. At the beginning, the wiring in the barn needed to be updated and we were very grateful to Victor Bolduc for taking care of it so thoroughly. It allowed us to welcome, for the 25^th year, students from the College who spent the night in the barn office and delivered lambs after an orientation at Weybridge House. We were most grateful to Jake, Sophie, Kate, and the College’s organic garden and farm group for making this possible; and for the students from Cheryl’s Spirit of Change Class. The annual Lamb Frolic will take place May 14, from 5:00 – 7:00. We hope you will stop by to enjoy the sheer pleasure these babies feel in running free in the fields. (Sometimes the less sedate mothers join in the fun as well).

This was also a month spent planning for the summer, when our new Foodworks intern, Megan Cousino, will be joining us for the first time. Megan will be assisting with all aspects of Treleven: farm management, the Nature Explore Family Sessions, the Narrative Therapy Master Class, the Parent/Child Center food program, and planning for the future. She has already established a Face Book page for us, where you can receive updates more frequently than from this web site.

We hope you will take a look at it, Like Us and post photos that you take when you are here for programs.

Plans for the summer at Treleven are shaping up beautifully. We are trying to find the right balance between Spirit, Nature, and Social Justice programming. At this time we are planning to open the farm for Tai Chi practitioners (on Wednesday mornings at 11:00), families whose children are interested in learning more about nature (Thursday mornings at 10:00), people interested in retreats for spiritual renewal (see Experiment with Light offerings), Narrative Therapy Practitioners, (workshop is filled but you can join the waiting list or on-line learning group), and other land based programs as they unfold. Let us know what you would like to see and we can try to arrange it. You may remember that Treleven Inc. grew from the original skill-shares on the farm where people came together to share their expertise. We hope this tradition will continue.

In case you don’t believe that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, and April showers bring May flowers, here are some photos from the first half of April. Despite the snow, Jim Andrew’s Herpetology students from UVM had a productive exploration of the vernal pools. We were also happy that the bias free policing and pre-school legislation bills passed in the State House. Both were related to groups concerned with social justice issues who have met on the farm.