Historic O’Neill Dairy Farm – Duxbury, MA
This morning we visited the O’Neill Dairy Farm in Duxbury, Ma after I read about the location last night during my search for a fun place to take the kids. The Dairy Farm is the one of the oldest and also last working dairy farms on the South Shore. It originally started operations in the 1700s and although the buildings have been moved and rebuilt , you’ll see the old building foundation from the parking lot, it still produces dairy products.
From the parking lot you’ll see the entrance to the trail which is lined with a wooden fence. Follow along down the fence where you’ll be met with a fork in the woods. If you continue to the right, where the red arrow points you, it will take you down to the farm buildings. In the distance you’ll be able to see cows grazing, and if you’re lucky (LOL) like we were, you’ll see two excavators digging up some dirt.
The trail loops around and will take you through the woods past an old vernal pool. There is another entrance to the path a little further ahead with access from The Village retirement center. There’s a really nicely constructed old rock wall, which you see so much in our travels along the South Shore, old evidence from the way life used to be!
Once we got back to the main part of the trail we saw the fork that we passed at the beginning. This time we decided to turn and saw a sign in the distance that we realized read “GOATS!” which lead us to a really cute farm right along the path with some goats, cows, ponies and chickens! To be honest, I really have no idea what the property was, but it was really cool! Once you turned around and continued up to forked entrance it eventually takes you back to the retirement community, which is where we saw the sign “Village Goat Trail Entrance”.
This place was such a gem of a spot! It’s pretty short, only a little bit over a mile but it’s full of history which is always interesting. Sometimes while we’re walking in the woods I like to picture what life was like hundreds of years ago and the signs all along the path really help to do that. If you wanted to take a stroller on this path you could as long as you stay to the left at the fork and head to the goats. There aren’t really any roots there, although it’s a bit mossy with a little bit of a dip, but my jogger would have been fine. Plus, once you pass that initial moss area it’s wide open and grassy or river pebbles. If you were to stay to the right at the fork you’d need to transfer to a carrier since there are rocks and roots and a few uneven bridges to walk over. Overall this place was great for this mornings adventure! I would recommend it for sure! Also, according to the Historic O’Neill Farm website they have a farm day, which didn’t happen last year but maybe will this year and if so we’ll definitely be coming back!