Students from Simmons College involved in Phase II of our ongoing archives project recently unearthed a treasure trove of historic documents,  including the original 1706 deed to the land acquired by John Davenport.  Reading the closing sentence of the deed,  “… and in the fifth year of the reign of Anne of England, Scotland, France and Ireland…,”  one realizes how […]

What do you do with a WWII-era jeep? Turn it into an educational project! Students at the Blue Hills Regional Vocational Technical High School have been working on restoring our antique jeep CJ2A for a year now – one of several antique cars here at the Wakefield Estate slated for restoration.

If the attendance at our Backyard Chickens workshop, is any indication, lots of people are thinking about raising their own chickens! The program, the second session in our Backyard Homesteading series, drew a standing room only crowd of over twenty-five. The workshop covered the basics of starting a backyard chicken coop and how to grow healthy, productive chickens for years of enjoyment […]

Graduate student interns from Simmons College sift and sort through three hundred years of documents to add to the growing archives at the Wakefield Estate. In these photos, the students examine ledgers, letters and photos from the mid-19th century. The Wakefield Estate provides graduate level fellowships and internships to provide valuable hands-on training for students from local universities.

Off to Market! The Wakefield staff and students from Thacher Montessori school kick off a new micro-enterprise student-managed egg business! Sales on the first day were swift! 

On January 9, the Wakefield Estate kicked off the first session of our winter Homesteading series with a workshop on Backyard Fruit Trees. The course covered the four P’s of growing fruit trees: purchasing, planting, pruning and providing. Participants learned how to grow healthy, productive fruit trees and then braved the cold for a live pruning demo on some of […]

On December 17, the Wakefield Trust hosted its first annual open house in the Davenport Mansion here at the Wakefield Estate. Visitors stopped by for an informal gathering and some holiday cheer. Wakefield staff used greens collected from the property, strings of lights and antique bird decoys to make the mansion house look festive for the holidays.

Several participants enjoyed a fun, hands-on kite-making and flying workshop led by Blue Hill Observatory Program Director Don McCasland Sunday, November 1st. After first constructing high quality Tyvek and fiberglass sled kites at the Wakefield Estate, participants took a tour of the Observatory and tested out their new kites. It was a clear day and the visitors could see landmarks […]

This year’s Holiday Decorations & Tablescapes demo did not fail to dazzle the enthusiastic participants who attended on November 19th for our first evening gathering. Lisa Ahern of Cedar Grove Gardens demonstrated some of her great ideas for easy and festive ways to make your home and table “shine” during the holidays. All the arrangements created during the workshop were raffled […]

During the first two weeks of November, the Wakefield Estate hosted the final BPS school visits for this fall. Since early October, we hosted over 900 elementary students from Boston Public Schools. Funding for bus transportation was provided by Boston Youth Environmental Network’s Get Out and Learn Program. It was both humbling and powerful to witness these young peoples’ response […]