On March 19, two years to the day after a fire destroyed the barn at Flat Point Farm and killed scores of animals, lambs born on the farm jumped and scurried on fresh hay.
The first two born this year, twins, came on March 1. Along with the rest of the flock, the twins enjoy nightly shelter in a replacement barn the Island community rallied to erect for farm owners Arnie Fischer and Eleanor Neubert. Neubert, long a pillar of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Fair and Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society, which runs the fair, said repopulating the farm’s livestock has been gradual work. “We just have a few, but we’ll build up the flock as we go along,” Neubert said.
The fire is still fresh in Neubert’s memory. “Two years ago today, we were just speechless, and just couldn’t believe what happened and what were we going to do,” Neubert said. “Such a tragic loss. We were as sad at the loss of the animals as we were with the loss of the structures.”
A total of 12 sheep and 24 lambs were slain in the fire, she said, and more lambs were expected.
The small flock of sheep she and her brother Arnie have now hail from Vermont and Connecticut. The Whiting family passed on a ram that made the lambs possible.
“We’ve been mainly raising sheep for meat and sheepskin, and a little bit for wool,” Neubert said. “But these have a nicer wool for making yarn and felt and that sort of thing.”
The felt is used by family member Emily Fischer, who makes goat milk soap, to cover her bars of soap, Neubert said. Another family member makes hedgehogs out of the wool and yarn.
Other signs of a recuperating farm showed in a full chicken coop and a pen of hay-munching cows, including a calf born in October. But the lambs took center stage. Neubert described the twins born on March 1 as “a wonderful sign of spring.”
She lost a friendly competition over their arrival: “We do play the guessing game of when the lambs are going to be born, and my brother, Arnie, picked March 1st, so he won this year.”
Neubert looked back with gratitude to the community, which stood up to help her family with a fundraising event and a GoFundMe page.
“Luckily the Island community rallied around us in many many ways, and [the Ag] Society threw that big fundraiser, which was just a wonderful, wonderful feeling of support,” she said. “And my cousin started the GoFundMe page. Then friends and volunteers volunteered endlessly with designing the barn, connections, and getting it built. And here we are two years later, and we’re more than happy with the progress we made over the two years.”