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.

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.

Chilmark selectmen will hire an engineering consultant to review two wind turbine projects planned for working farms on South Road.

The town selectmen voted to hire the consultant at their meeting Tuesday night after discussion about an appeal by neighbors of building permits issued recently for the Allen Farm and Grey Barn to put up wind turbines.

The Chilmark zoning board of appeals will hold a public hearing on the appeal on Jan. 19.

Five years ago Mitchell Posin and Clarissa Allen had a vision: of sheep grazing under a windmill that powered their Chilmark farm. It was a vision of a working farm functioning with clean energy, from the grass the sheep ate to the compost tea they helped produce to the wind that spun the turbine.

On Monday morning that vision became reality when a 149-foot turbine was installed at the farm, the largest turbine to date on the Island.

Once it is fully operational, the windmill will produce 125,000 kilowatt hours per year.