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| Kids decorate pumpkins at last year’s Fall Fun Farm Day (courtesy photo) |
CAPE NEDDICK -
The Youth Enrichment Center at Hilton-Winn Farm will be
hopping again this year on Saturday October 6. The whole family can enjoy a
beautiful day on the farm with games, nature hikes, arts and crafts activities,
scarecrow making, pumpkin painting, and more. The farm is located at 189
Ogunquit Road in Cape Neddick.
The Youth Enrichment Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit
organization dedicated to positive youth development, nature-based education,
and stewardship of the unique agricultural landscape of New England. It s based
at Hilton-Winn Farm, a King’s Grant farm dating back to the 1600s.
Over its 400+-year history, the Hilton-Winn Farm has been a
witness to the changing cultural and environmental landscape of southern New
England. Its early inhabitants were likely participants in the colonial French
and Indian Wars, and since then the property has supported a range of economic
activity that reflects Maine history. It has been used variously to cultivate
many different kinds of vegetables, fruit orchards, raspberries, and
blueberries, to run a logging sawmill and a blacksmithing operation, and to
raise chickens and dairy cows, among other activities. Today, it provides the
perfect setting for the Youth Enrichment Center.
The land that comprises the Hilton-Winn farm has a rich
history, starting with the first known inhabitants: the Algonquian-speaking
Armouchiquois tribe of Native Americans who were based in what is today Saco,
Maine, according to its website.
The farm’s site first came under English colonial influence
in 1620 through a land patent from King James 1 to the Plymouth Council for New
England. It appears that English settler Edward Winn acquired a royal land
grant of the property in or about 1640, and by 1710 his grandson Josiah Winn
had settled 10 acres of land there. The property—which grew to over 200
acres—was farmed by eight generations of Winns, and then Clifford Hilton (Ada
Winn’s son) purchased the farm in the 1940s.
In the 1990s, as the rural qualities of southern Maine life
were being threatened by rampant development, Ethel Hilton, the 9th generation
of the Hilton‐Winn family, was
dedicated to preserving the woodlands, wetlands, and agricultural character of
this historic property for future generations to enjoy. In 1998 she donated 185
acres of the property to the York Land Trust, which now forms the Hilton‐Winn King’s Grant Conservation Area.
In 2002 Youth Enrichment Center executive director Nancy
Breen purchased the remaining central forty-eight acres of rolling fields and
forests with one goal in mind: to establish a safe, peaceful, and fun
environment for children to connect with the land, learn about the science and
art of farming, and be transformed along the way.
The Fall Fun Farm Day is one of many offerings that looks to
achieve this mission.
Admission for the Fall Fun Farm Day is $5 for adults and $3
for kids; the day starts at 10 a.m. and goes until 4 p.m.
