Oxon Hill Farm

"Rhode Island Red," I pointed at the chicken and turned to my friend Mary. "Exceptional breed!"

"I loved that story," Mary sighed, immediately recognizing the quote from Marshfield Dreams by Ralph Fletcher, excerpts of which we had taught for many years.

We were at Oxon Hill Farm, a National Park Service site on the eastern bank of the Potomac just south of DC, and quite a few chickens were milling about. It was not our planned destination; in fact we had already spent a fun hour smacking golf balls at Topgolf. If I hadn't missed the ramp on the way home, we would have been zipping over the river by then instead of strolling the grounds of this little working farm.

The bookstore and visitor center were right ahead, and a friendly ranger greeted us as we pushed through the door. "What can you tell us about this place?" Mary asked, and he was off and running, giving us at least ten minutes of history and an overview of the present-day operation.

There was the usual stripping of land rights from the indigenous Piscataway, followed by a Protestant revolution that turned Maryland into a royal colony during the reign of William and Mary, some War of 1812 action, and, of course, slavery. After the Civil War, the farm was divided and subdivided until it was sold to the federal government in 1891. For the next 60 years, it was used as a place where patients from St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Insane worked therapeutically, conveniently also producing food for the hospital.

And now? It's a place where lots of city school kids come to learn about and experience a farm, 289 acres with chickens, cows, horses, and pigs, less than 10 miles from our nation's capital.