Shear madness reigns this month in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

Photograph: Bryan Haeffele

Your kid may love her Uggs, but she probably doesn’t know how they came to be so cozy. No need to book a trip to Australia for revelation—it can be found about 40 minutes from midtown.

Sleepy Hollow’s Philipsburg Manor is the oldest working farm in the metropolitan area and a picturesque historic jewel. Clichés be damned: Entering the compound is like stepping back in time. One minute you’re on a typical suburban-Westchester street. The next, you’ve crossed a wooden bridge and landed before a working 18th-century mill fronting an idyllic vista with a stone manor house, gabled barn and 25 bucolic acres. My son, Timothy, was three years old when we first visited Philipsburg Manor, in 2005. Although he was too young to take an interest in the workings of a gristmill, his delight in jumping into a pile of hay was off-the-chart and all my husband and I needed to feel glad we’d made the trip.

Since that visit, we return every April for the Sheep-to-Shawl festival (this year, Saturday 26 and Sunday 27), when workers in period garb relieve sheep of their bulky winter coats by hand. Little ones can’t help with the shearing, but since Sheep-to-Shawl covers the entire process of making woolen cloth, kids can participate in many of the activities that follow. Timothy was four when he first helped with the “picking and carding” of the wool, which entails removing bits of straw and combing the bunched fleece to straighten it. Older children can spin and dye the yarn, and then weave it into cloth.