Spend a Winter's Day on the Farm

  Fosterfields Living Historical Farm presents its Winter’s Day on the Farm on Sunday, Feb. 5 from noon to 4 p.m.

The wintertime activities of a farm family in the 1920s will be duplicated and visitors can  get a last look at the existing Main Barn and Ensilage Pits before their restoration begins this year.

 Before electric refrigeration was available, ice was used to keep food from spoiling. Visitors can watch the farmers harvest blocks of ice from the pond with  special ice-cutting tools. Then watch as the Belgian draft horses, Calvin and Hobbes, use a sled to move ice up to The Willows’ ice house for storage.

 In The Willows’ kitchen, visitors can stop by to meet the Fosters’ busy “cook.” The Willows is the 1854 Gothic Revival-style house that was once home to Charles Foster and his daughter, Caroline.

Visitors can lend a hand with other cold-weather chores.  They will follow the farmer and horse team into the woods, and tap maple trees to collect sap.

They will also learn about wood lots, and help determine which trees are best to use for firewood. Later they can  watch as the teamster directs the huge horses to haul away a log, which is destined to be cut into stove wood.

Visitors can also help with more farm chores such as collecting eggs, sawing and stacking wood, building birdhouses, and husking corn. They can watch a demonstration of the single-cylinder gasoline engine as it grinds corn to feed the farm animals.

A walk around the barnyard allows visitors to  meet the Jersey cows, smaller, prettier and more friendly than the Holsteins they may be used to on today’s farms, and other resident farm animals.

Once inside the farmhouse, they can  smell the wood stove cooking underway in the kitchen. A wagon ride around the farm completes the tour.

In the Visitors Center is the rransportation exhibit with  Charles Foster’s Rockaway carriage, and Caroline Foster’s Model “T” Ford and Hupmobile as well as  interactive displays. In the auditorium, families can make a Valentine for a local children’s hospital. Refreshments are on sate in the Visitors Center.

            Fosterfields Living Historical Farm is located at 73 Kahdena Road., Morristown, NJ, 07960.  Admission for this event is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors (65+), $4 for children ages 4 to 16, and $2 for children ages 2 and 3. Admission is free for children under age 2 and Friends members with a valid membership card.

            Fosterfields Living Historical Farm is one of 38 facilities, on more than 18,000 acres, managed by the Morris County Park Commission. With Caroline Foster’s passing in 1979, Fosterfields was bequeathed to the Morris County Park Commission, and became the first preserved “living historical farm” in New Jersey. Fosterfields Living Historical Farm, including The Willows, is a New Jersey and National Register Historic Site. For more information, call 973-326-7645 or visit www.morrisparks.net, and www.friendsoffosterfields.org.