At farms around the Island, lambs are one of the many spring harbingers here that include the chorus of pinkletinks from the swamps and wetlands, and majestic osprey circling overhead as they build their nests.

Beetlebung Farm owner Amy Weinberg said that the group believed farms should be allowed to hold events under the current bylaw, which permits “use of premises or structures for...agriculture; or work related directly thereto.”

Andy Rice has shorn the sheep of Allen Farm, in addition to almost every other Island flock, for 30 years. This year, however, the tradition has been passed on to Aaron Loux.

It’s a misty May morning in Chilmark and while other farmers race up and down South Road, Mitchell Posin doesn’t seem to have an agenda for the day.

Wendy Gray's Field and Felt session with Charter School students Saturday included a guest appearance by a ewe from the Allen Farm.

I was 15 minutes late to the Allen Farm this morning. It was cold and getting out of bed felt like torture.

She grew up in Chilmark, the twelfth generation of an Island farming
family. He was raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., the grandson of Jewish
immigrants. He had never farmed and she was all set to move to Boston.
But life, horses and a flock of sheep intervened. Thirty-two years later
Mitchell Posin and Clarissa Allen talk about their relationship, while
inhabitants of the farm chime in with crows and bleats, contributing to
the tale.

Interviews by Julia Rappaport

Mitchell

Clarissa Allen and Mitchell Posin of the Allen Farm Sheep and Wool Company of Chilmark have been named by the Permanent Endowment Fund of Martha’s Vineyard as the 2008 recipients of the Creative Living Award.

The fund will present the Creative Living Award on August 5 at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury beginning at 5:30 p.m.

For Mitchell Posin, who runs the Allen Sheep and Wool Company with his wife Clarissa Allen, the most exciting thing on the farm right now is compost.

“This compost tea has really got my juices flowing,” said the farmer, a stone-hard hand resting on the 50-gallon plastic drum he uses in his barn to brew the solution. One barrel is enough to fertilize an acre of land.

“In the space of a single period at the end of a sentence, there are 500,000 bacteria in this. You’re talking little critters,” Mr. Posin enthused.

Less agriculturally-minded folk than Mitchell Posin might mistake the sign on South Road advertising compost tea for a joke, something dreamt up by kids searching for the world’s least appealing beverage to flog by the side of the road.

In fact it is there to promote the result of three years’ trial and error by Mr. Posin, the co-owner Allen Farm sheep and wool company: an organic fertilizer solution for the bespoke ecology of Martha’s Vineyard.