Newborn lambs, fuzzy white and black, are struggling to their wobbly legs on a cold spring day at Gale Woods Farm Park in Minnetrista. The woolly babies -- which will be on public display from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday -- are the latest reminder that Gale Woods is an unusual park run as a modern working farm where everything grown goes to market as food. "People need to know where their food comes from," said Tom McDowell, assistant superintendent of outdoor education and recreation at Three Rivers Park District, which owns Gale Woods. "It wasn't too long ago that most families had somebody still living on the farm, and that is not the case anymore. This is everybody's grandfather's farm that they can come visit."
The picturesque 410-acre farmstead on Whaletail Lake was donated to Three Rivers Park District by Al and Leona Gale in 2000 with the requirement that it be run as an educational farm.
Since the park's opening six years ago, the same exploding interest in healthy, locally produced food that prompted First Lady Michelle Obama to put in a vegetable garden at the White House has made Gale Woods a hit, with about 50,000 visitors a year. The educational programs at Gale Woods are the fastest- growing among all 19 of the district's regional parks and reserves, the district says.
What's more, nearby residents snap up its vegetables, eggs, beef, chicken, turkey, pork and lamb. School kids come by the busloads on field trips and for day camps to learn how food grows. Couples eager to be married in the lovely rural setting have booked weddings every Saturday through October in the rental pavilion overlooking the lake.
"People have been hungry for what we have to offer here," said live-in farm supervisor Tim Reese. "We are sold out all the time."
Reese has training in biology, environmental studies and agriculture education. This week he castrated some of the 23 piglets born on the farm and oversaw the birth of the first 22 lambs from an expected 64 this spring.
McDowell, who grew up on a family dairy farm in Pennsylvania, had done a lot of thinking about how to include agriculture in the district's environmental education efforts. The Gales' decision to give the farm to the district was "like a dream come true," said McDowell. "There is strong interest -- not just for kids but people of all ages -- to get back into a farm setting."
Gale Woods grounds are open from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, but the animals are open to public view only on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon.
