Focus on Hanley Farm – May 2016

May kicks-off the event season at Hanley Farm with two annual favorites—the Heritage Plant & Garden Fair and the Children’s Heritage Fair.

Mark your calendar for Mother’s Day weekend, Saturday and Sunday, May 7 & 8 from 10:00am-3:00pm, for the Hanley Heritage Plant & Garden Fair. There will be a wide variety of Hanley Farm heritage plants for sale including perennial flowers, shrubs, herbs, and heirloom vegetables starts.

In addition to the plant sale, there will be many activities from guided house tours ($5) and garden tours to hayrides and a scavenger hunt. Food will be available for purchase and special gift items will be found at the Mercantile. A special treat for Mother this year will be a teatime bower of flowers in which you may take a family photo. Bring the whole family and picnic by the pasture and stroll through the blooming gardens. Admission to the Fair is free; Hanley house tours are $5/person and offered from noon-3:00pm both days. All proceeds benefit the Southern Oregon Historical Society and its mission to make history come alive.

On Saturday, May 28th from 11:00am-4:00pm the Children’s Heritage Fair is open to the public. This is one of our largest and most anticipated events of the year. The Fair includes two school days that are exclusively offered to 4th-grade classes across Jackson County and ties in with their history curriculum. Over these two days, there will be over 500 students learning about their local history and agricultural traditions at the Farm! Each class will have the opportunity to make candles and clay pots, learn about the no-till vegetable gardens, try their hand at “faux” cow milking, learn about the Oregon Trail from costumed interpreters, bake bread and churn their own butter!

Admission is $8 for Adults, $5 for Children and SOHS members. This special event will include all the exciting activities listed above, as well as several additional attractions including wagon rides, live fiddlers, farm-fresh-food vendors, guided house tours, pioneer dress-up, woodworking demonstrations, tin punching, and so much more! This event continues to be an invaluable source of learning, fun, and community spirit for young and old alike!

To volunteer at these events, email joelle@sohs.org or visit www.sohs.org. Hanley Farm, owned and operated by the Southern Oregon Historical Society, is located at 1053 Hanley Road, between Jacksonville and Central Point.