Baby Love | The Baby Animals Festival at Hancock Shaker Village

The lamb certainly isn’t shy. On knobby knees, it takes its star turn in the middle of a circle of children. Giggling, they dart their hands closer and closer until they summon the courage to pat the creature on its head. The lamb responds with happy bleats and exploratory nibbles on the children’s shorts.

A few feet away, a group of parents—smiling, but clearly undercaffeinated—watch over their flock. When one of the children inevitably asks, “Can we get a pet sheep?” it’s answered with a heavy sigh.

While lambs and children instinctively embrace spring, we who’ve seen a few need a little more coaxing. As our children run barefoot through the grass, we’re still pulling on wool socks out of habit and wondering if we can push off the first mow another weekend. But since 2002, the unambiguously named Baby Animals Festival at Massachusetts’s Hancock Shaker Village has provided just the jolt some of us need. A chance to get up close with the museum’s newborn animals—it’s a simple idea, but effective. This festival is to spring what a polar bear plunge is to winter; it’s a full-body immersion into everything green and young and new.

An older man approaches the crowd. “I’m Bill Mangiardi, and I’m the farm director of this beautiful place,” he says, then starts herding people onto a hay wagon. It’s an hour before the museum opens, and he’s giving a behind-the-scenes tour to two dozen guests, something he’ll do every day of the festival. The lamb, adopted by Mangiardi after being rejected by its mother, trots close behind him as the last guest climbs into the wagon. “Come on, this little one needs a bottle!” he shouts.

Hancock Shaker Village is both a museum and the oldest working farm in the Berkshires. The wagon rolls peacefully by the green buds peeking up in a CSA garden. Donkeys bray from their pen; a mother cow stands protectively over a calf born just yesterday. Beyond the farm stands a line of Shaker dormitories and workhouses, each beautiful in its plainness. The Shakers were utopians who sought to make heaven on earth, which to them meant order, peace, and simplicity. Their minimalist aesthetic is still enchanting to anyone who sees the divine in a right angle and a well-swept floor.

At the heart of the village stands a massive circular stone barn. Inside, mother goats, sheep, and cows rest in pens with their newborns. A particularly vocal ewe greets the tour with a full-throated baaaah. Immediately, Mangiardi encourages children to clamber into the pens. He teases and jokes with them, paying special attention to the shy ones. With a “Here you go!” he surprises one boy by shoving a baby goat into his arms, and in an instant the youngster transforms from timid to beaming. Mangiardi ends the tour by placing a chick on each of the guests’ heads. It’s a silly moment that lets the kids laugh at their parents, and lets the parents laugh at themselves.

Outside the barn, the museum’s gates open and an unbroken column of families begins marching across the grounds. Soon a small parking lot of baby strollers appears along the barn’s curved wall. Mangiardi points to it and grins. “That’s my favorite sight,” he says.

Inside, the barn is alive with sound. Everywhere parents are lowering children into pens, letting new life meet new life. Above, dozens of birds nesting in the rafters add their song to the chorus of laughs, moos, cheers, and baahs. It’s a peaceful chaos, almost pagan in its freedom. The straitlaced Shakers probably would have disapproved of all this clamor. It wasn’t quite their idea of heaven, but it’s heaven nonetheless.

The 2024 Baby Animals Festival at Hancock Shaker Village will be held 4/13–5/5. For more information, go to hancockshakervillage.org.