The Sweet Tradition That Signals Spring in Bar Harbor.

Carrie Jones

May 09, 2026

BAR HARBOR—On a mild Saturday, more than 50 people gathered outside a big barn with a blue gate 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.

The land at the Peggy Rockefeller Farm was gifted to the college in 2010 for agriculture and conservation. David Rockefeller, Sr., made that gift. It provides multiple student opportunities, and it’s also a true working farm.

The College of the Atlantic (COA) officially owns Peggy Rockefeller Farm, a sprawling landscape of fields, wetlands, and forest, but events like these make the land and its legacy feel as if the farm belongs to the island community.

About one-third of the land is farm, the rest, according to the college is “second-growth forest or wetland.”

Also according to the college, “Acadia National Park administers conservation easements on the entire property” which is in the Northeast Creek Watershed. The creek runs through the old Cameron farm property.

An orchard, which was the passion project of past farm manager CJ Walke and COA professor Todd Little-Seibold hosts unique apples, peaches, and pears.

Back in 2010, when David Rockefeller, Sr., gave the farm to COA he also gave an endowment to help cover the costs of maintenance and management. It’s meant to stay land focused on agriculture and conservation.

Prior to 2010 and the farms’ acquisition by Peggy Rockefeller, the property was multiple farms owned by families.

Farms used to be all along the roads in the area, Nugent said. It’s not quite like that now.

There’s an old family plot tucked up on a hillside behind the yellow farm house that was built in the 1920s.

The entire area was historically a strong farming community, Nugent said. The land was eventually developed for homes and commercial uses.

“There’s an additional 25-30 acres adjacent to our fields farmed for neighbors. Hay field, pasture, protected wetland, and forest make up the property,” Nugent explained.

According to its website, “Peggy Rockefeller Farm focuses on the production of pastured and rotationally grazed livestock products. The farm raises grass-fed beef and pork as well as certified organic pastured poultry and lamb. Currently, the farm has a mixed flock of Romney and Khatahdin sheep for dual purpose production. The farm is also home to a small mixed herd of Belted Galloway and Red Devon cattle, Gloucestershire Old Spot and Large Black cross pigs and a flock of approximately 250 mixed breed laying hens. Seasonally Peggy Rockefeller Farm raises MOFGA Certified Organic Poultry in the form of and additional meat chickens (broilers), ducks and turkeys for the Thanksgiving market.”

There is a poultry processing facility on site.

“In addition to livestock, Peggy Rockefeller Farm also cultivates a mixture of certified organic fruits, berries, vegetables in a small organic garden. The half-acre garden plot grows a rotating mixture of long season vegetable crops for storage, as well as Sparkle strawberries and two rows of dwarf apple trees, representing over two dozen apple varieties. Off in the field, our heritage apple orchard contains 25 unique Maine varieties on standard rootstock, including Addison Ancient, Orland Town Office and Captain Zero. In the backyard of the 1920s farmhouse are a few peach trees and a raspberry patch,” the site continues.

Things at Peggy Rockefeller Farms are up to MOFGA organic standards. The easement through the National Park Service limits development and erosion, and protects it as farmland. Nitrate loading is always thought about, the potential impacts to the environment, the watershed, the community are always in Nugent’s and COA’s focus.

It’s “pretty much a rulebook for good soil health and general biodiversity,” Nugent explained last year.

“I like working and living in environments with a focus on asking big questions and challenging the current way of doing things,” she says in an old interview with COA’s Jeremy Powers, “and farming and caring for the land and the animals makes me feel empowered to make meaningful change in the world and gives me a sense of purpose.”

Purpose. Community. Meaningful change.

The farm is also home to a lot of opportunities with the constantly expanding role as a community resource.

MDI residents can be a part of the Give-and-Take Produce Exchange, “a community-driven give-and-take produce trailer managed by Healthy Acadia’s Downeast Gleaning Initiative and located at Peggy Rockefeller Farm in Bar Harbor (538 Norway Drive – accessible via the Crooked Road entrance),” according to Healthy Acadia.

People can donate extra produce and take home fresh food left at the exchange site for free.

“This was beautiful,” someone murmured at the event back in 2023 as they walked down the Crooked Road back to their car. “It felt like community.”

It did.

Because it was. And it still is.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Brochures of Maine.

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Photos: Shaun Farrar and Carrie Jones.

There are a lot more photos on our Facebook page, here.

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LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Want to visit? You can! Here is the information.

COA official farm webpage: https://www.coa.edu/farms/peggy-rockefeller-farm/

Shopify Store Link: This shows the farm’s current in stock products in the farm store for pre order as well as registration info for events.

Self Serve Farm Store: Accepts cash, check and payments through Shopify. It is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. They have eggs and frozen products in there.

For an evolving list of farms and farm stands in the area, check out our post on Acadia Adventures.

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