Summer Trip to Sanborn Mills Farm

Our Guild Summer Trip this year will be a visit to Sanborn Mills Farm in Loudon, NH.

Sanborn Mills is a traditional New Hampshire farm and nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainability, creativity, and preserving folklife and agricultural knowledge so that the best of the past can help shape our future. It’s a place for people to learn how to work the land in ways that are sustainable and self-renewing.  Using the model of a traditional New England diversified working farm (agricultural fields, managed forests, timber framed barns for animals, sawmill, grist mill and blacksmith shop), the farm serves as a place to apply the lessons learned from the past to current needs for sustainability and community.

A century and more ago, Sanborn Mills Farm was a bustling, thriving center of agricultural activities that supported an extended family and served the community. Today, the farm has a group of instructors, farmers, craftspeople and historians dedicated to teaching the traditional skills that were commonplace then. They provide opportunities for people to learn old-fashioned ways and explore how they can be integrated into modern life and believe that these skills and a vital connection to the land continue to be important and relevant

Our visit will include a history of the farm and a tour of the main structures – the wood shop, sawmill and blacksmith shops - and the gardens. There may be an opportunity to view one of the water-powered mills in operation, timber framing projects, and possibly plowing, haying, and/or logging with oxen and draft horses.

The tour is approximately 2 hours, starting at 10 am.  Bring a picnic lunch and we can find a spot to enjoy our food and chat.

Note: Registration is required; sign up on the Guild web site.  Directions to the farm can be found here.  Note that some GPS directions may take you in on the wrong end of Sanborn Road (which is not passable) so be sure to follow the directions on the web site.