A Magical Realist: Wolf Hollow and Russell Orchards

Today Karma and I took Primo, Secondo, and Terzo took a trip to Ipswich MA to see Wolf Hollow and Russell Orchards.

We went to Wolf Hollow first. It's official name is the North American Wolf Foundation and it's a non-profit organization. It was founded in 1988 by Paul C. Soffron "to preserve the wolf in the wild, through education and exposure." Wolfs in the USA were plentiful before immigrants from Europe settled here and took their prejudices about wolves with them. They were then hunted almost to extinction and have only recently begun bouncing back with the Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately in May 2011, Senator Jon Tester from Montana slipped a rider into a standard budget bill that delisted the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act in six states (ID, MT, WY, MN, WI, and MI) and now their numbers are plummeting again due to hunting. This is incredibly sad since wolves are actually really important to the environment. If you don't believe me, you can watch this video called "How Wolves Change Rivers" to see what happened in Yellowstone National Park when they reintroduced wolves to the park:

Anyway, Wolf Hollow was cool. It was remarkable to see how similar wolf behavior is to dog behavior. The kids had learned about wolves in school so they were interested in seeing the wolves up close.

Secondo and Terzo look at the wolves.

One of the wolves.

This wolf came right up near us.

Secondo uses her binoculars to look for wolves.

I try on a skull in the education center.

From Wolf Hollow, it was a quick three minute drive to Russell Orchards. The first trees were planted there in 1920 by the original owner, Dr. Joseph Goodale. In the 1950s it was sold to the farm manager Kenneth Macleod. When he was ready to retire he felt pressured to sell to developers. A group of neighbors joined forces to purchase the land instead. They then asked the Essex County Greenbelt Association to write an agricultural preservation restriction, which they did. This restriction legally prevents the land from ever being turned into a development. With those restrictions in place, they sold the farm to the Russell Family who still owns it to this day. I like this back story since it's a great example of how neighbors can band together to preserve local farms. The farm itself is great. It pick your own fruits, hay rides, farm animals you can pet, a winery, a bakery, and a farm store with homemade ice cream and fresh apple cider doughnuts. They have an apples and wine festival next weekend and I'm strongly considering going back to check it out. The festival is supposed to have folk music, hands-on cider pressing, make your own apple pies, and apple and wine samples to taste.