Early Winter at Hilltop Farm

Now that the Holidays are a memory, let's go outside and enjoy our beautiful New England. Come and enjoy the peace, quiet and winter tranquility at Hilltop Farm.

Super Bowl Sunday Fun Run at Hilltop Farm!

Start a new tradition this year with a Super Bowl Sunday Fun Run at Hilltop Farm! The February 5 run, hosted by The Friends of the Farm at Hilltop, will feature a beautiful, family friendly, 5k trail that leads runners through the grounds at Hilltop Farm. No registration or reservations needed - just show up! Start time will be promptly at 10 a.m. with refreshments and a warming station to follow.

This is your ticket to a guilt free super bowl. All ages welcomed! Fan attire encouraged! Run, walk, or do the wave through the course or simply enjoy walking the grounds.

Hilltop Farm is located on 1616 Mapleton Avenue, in Suffield. Check our website, http://www.hilltopfarmsuffield.org/events/131-funrun for more details.

The 20th Annual Great Backyard Bird Count

Mark Your Calendar!

The Friends of the Farm at Hilltop (FOFAH) invites you to participate in the 2017 Great Backyard Bird Count. The 20th annual GBBC is scheduled for Friday, February 17 through Monday, February 20.

FOFAH challenges birders of all levels of skills and experience to come to Hilltop or go to your own back yard. Simply log on to http://gbbc.birdcount.org and register. Then tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, February 17-20, 2017. You can count from any location, anywhere in the world!

The Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time. Since 1998, more than 100,000 people of all ages and walks of life have joined the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds.

The 2016 GBBC was epic. An estimated 163,763 bird watchers from more than 130 countries joined in! Participants submitted 162,

052 bird checklists reporting 5,689 species-more than half the known bird species in the world and 599 more species than last year!

Suffield photographer and birder, Libby Lord has captured the images of over 35 different birds at Hilltop! You will see her photographs in a poster, The Birds of Hilltop, at the entry kiosk.

Help make this the most successful count ever by participating this year in the Great Backyard Bird Count!

Attention Vegetable Gardeners! Time To Plan Your Garden

The National Garden Association provides a free Garden Planting Calendar at garden.org/apps/calendar/.

Just enter your zipcode and it will provide all kinds of useful information about the vegetables you are planning for your garden. Learn when to expect the last frost date, when to start the seeds for each kind of vegetable and when to transplant them into the ground in the Hilltop Community Garden or your own backyard!

FOFAH is an all volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to restoring Hilltop Farm into an educational and recreational resource for the community. All donations go to the improvement of the farm. Many thanks to the volunteers for their dedication and community support that has allowed FOFAH to advance the restoration of the Hilltop Farmstead.