Lamb-ageddon! Crowd goes wild as baby sheep frolic on the field
COA Peggy Rockefeller Farm’s Leaping into Spring event is a sweet tradition that signals the turning of the season on Mount Desert Island. Via Bar Harbor Story.
By Carrie Jones | Bar Harbor Story
On a mild Saturday, more than 50 people gathered outside a big barn with a blue gate at COA’s Peggy Rockefeller Farm and waited for spring to officially begin.
They made small talk the way people do when they’re happy to be outside after a long winter. They praised Kids’ Corner. They pointed at piglets. Children ran loose in the grass like they had been waiting months for permission. A white chicken stood guard at the gate as if it were in charge of the whole affair.
Inside the barn, the lambs were restless and adorable, shifting and bleating, ready for a world they had never stepped their hooves onto.
“This will be their first time out on pasture ever,” Farm Manager April Nugent told the crowd before she opened the gate.
One ambitious lamb climbed onto the back of a sheep to get a better look at the crowd. Behind him, that same white chicken flapped its way up to the fencing to supervise.
“Always with the chickens,” a College of the Atlantic student laughed.
“They are so bossy.”
“Love them.”
Phones came out. Cameras lifted. The crowd leaned forward together.
“On the count of three,” Nugent called. “One… Two… Three…”
The gate opened, and the lambs spilled into the sunlight, hooves hitting grass, voices rising from the crowd.
“Go! Go! Go!” one man called.
Within moments, some of the lambs began to bound.
And just like that, spring arrived—not only for the farm, but for the community that shows up every year to watch it happen.