Donald Little Jr., who has helped the Myopia polo team win many a chukker, now devotes his attention to commanding the Centennial Farms thoroughbred racing partnership. And that partnership is in the heart of its season at the Saratoga Racetrack in upstate New York. Coming off the big Fasig-Tipton Yearling Sale at Saratoga, Little, son of the late Donald Little Sr., recently spoke with "Tell Me Something Good" columnist Helen Weatherall. Three decades in the sport and business of racing, Centennial Farms has an impressive record. The partnership’s horses have won or placed in over 60 graded …

Last Sunday, Thomas Grimshaw, Keaton Holappa and Andrew Gauthier joined the ranks of Gerald Ford, Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg and Michael Moore. The three Hamilton residents and members of Wenham-based Boy Scout Troop 28 became Eagle Scouts. Fellow troop members, family and friends were at the ceremony known as the Eagle Court of Honor held at First Church in Wenham. To become an Eagle Scout is not a small undertaking. Many, if not most boys can claim to have at one time or another been a Cub Scout, but it is a select few that make it to scouting’s top rank. Becoming an Eagle Scout takes…

You can’t keep a good man down. And if that man creates something good, you can’t keep that down either. The proof is in the Boston Equestrian Classic. Don Little may have gone on to greener pastures but the show - his show - goes on. Little died on Feb. 29 at age 77 from injuries sustained after an accident while competing in the Masters Classic at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Wellington, Fla. This year’s first competitors at the Equestrian Classic will warm up their mounts in the early morning of Thursday, Sept. 6 and as afternoon shadows lengthen on Sunday, Sept. 9 Grand Prix riders …

An idea, even a good idea, is nothing more than a thought in a cartoon bubble until somebody takes action. Caitlyn Passaretti and her peers in the Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School Class of 2012 know this. Passaretti and her friends are doers. With classes and final exams behind her, Passaretti along with 17 others, is turning her attention away from books to another kind of work - the kind that raises a sweat and dirties the hands. This growing season as participants in the Hamilton-Wenham Green Grow-A-Row program, the group, led by Passaretti is toiling to put food on the table of those …

On Saturday, June 2, Molly Morin of Hamilton is going for a bike ride - a hundred mile bike ride that is. As a participant in the thirteenth annual Best Buddies: Hyannis Port Challenge, Morin seeks to assist the namesake organization in raising money to support programs for children with special needs. As a mother of a 13-year-old daughter on the autism spectrum, Morin knows of the value of the Best Buddies programs firsthand. “(Special needs kids) go to self-contained classrooms by middle school. There’s really no social interaction going on with her peers," she said, explaining how the …

Rowing a boat gently down a stream, merrily, merrily merrily, makes life seem but a dream. But what about rowing a boat hard across the sea? It’s a question Bosnian war veteran and recent trans-Atlantic rower Bryan Fuller of Hamilton can answer well. Miraculous and painful are two words that figure into his not so simple answer. “It’s kind of a strange story,” said Fuller about how he came to muscle a rowboat from the Canary Islands to Barbados as a member of an eight-man team. It all began on a day like any other at the gym. Like so many in these rough economic times, Fuller was out of a job…

In the days of yore - those of Shakespeare, Dickens or Robert Johnson - an arriving minstrel with mud on his boots and lute in hand would be greeted by the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. When an entertainer appeared at a quiet hamlet everyone turned out for the show. But time and technology has brought Facebook, Twitter, Xbox and Katy Perry - whose blue hair is everywhere. Today a minstrel without amps has a snowball’s chance in Hades to stop traffic. Modern day minstrel Harvey Reid knows this and on April 14 at The Community House of Hamilton-Wenham he’s going to try anyway, …

The jury is out on which will happen first - DNA retrieved from the Arctic will bring back the woolly mammoth, or Lions will return to Hamilton and Wenham. The current odds-on favorite is the latter, as Lions-of-old Harold Simpson and Butch Crosbie usher in energetic Lions Club Zone 2 chairwoman Stacie Whittier. “It takes 20 members to charter a new club,” said Whittier, who is spearheading an effort to relaunch the Lions Club in Hamilton and Wenham. “But we’ll take as many as we can get.” And what is the Lions Club? Whittier, a Georgetown resident and Secretary of the Salisbury Lions Club, …

Trash day is aptly named. It is the day of the week that citizens of Hamilton and Wenham expect to see trash on their streets. Trash day is the day that clutter and debris is eliminated, or so the idea goes. But, at times, life proves more complicated than this. When changes in town trash rules and uppity weather enter the picture, trash day becomes less a day to cleanse and simplify than a day to wrestle with outside forces. Anyone who has ever lived with roommates knows that there is a filth tolerance gene. In a group of two or more, there is always at least one person who would rather buy …

It may be that Valentine’s Day was dreamt up to brighten one of the Northeast’s most gloomy months. But this year crocuses emerged even before the holiday’s hearts. And sugar maple trees are already dripping sap. Farm Educator Rebecca Fahey noted this week that the beef herd is about to start calving, when asked if life at Appleton Farms has shifted with the warm winds and snowless days. “Yes,” she acknowledged, “(calving is) actually a little earlier this year.” As for the milk herd, the weather doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact. Unlike the beef cows, the jersey cows of Appleton’s …

Greg Horner and Chris LaPointe of Hamilton have a shared vision. It’s a vision of soil, sweat, shared effort and a slew of sweet homegrown harvests. In short, they envision a community garden for Hamilton and Wenham. Slowed by failed location leads, the garden has been some time coming, but through maintained effort and cooperation from Matt Ulrich of UBLA Site Planners, Horner and LaPointe are close to achieving success. With a site secured at Pingree Park, all that is needed now is 10 or so committed gardeners. Just as seed packets stamped 2012 are appearing on shelves in hardware stores …

Name a suburban predator that acts by night, has a crushing grip and an unflinching stare and evades crime reports. An acknowledged killer, it is common to backyards in Hamilton and Wenham and is generally welcomed. The answer - an owl. “You can find them looking in knot holes (of trees),” says ornithologist Jim Berry of Ipswich, who offhand knows the whereabouts of two owls locally. These bantam-sized owls with prominent ear-tufts sport plumage of one of two color phases - red or grey. Chester, a red one, lives in a sugar maple outside Fred and Gay Hammond’s house in Hamilton. “We named him …

Back in the day it was about necessity and ease, about coping with impossibly deep snow and impossibly great distances. It was about getting from point A to point B. It was about getting out to ice flows to hunt walrus or seal and it was about safe guarding a town from an outbreak of diphtheria. But in the age of snowmobiles, dog sledding is about something else.  “It’s for the love of the dogs, that’s why they do it,” says New England Sled Dog Race Chairwoman Susanna Colloredo-Mansfeld. The New England Sled Dogs races had been originally scheduled for this coming weekend, Jan. 14-15, at …

Measured by either the depth of presents beneath the tree or the snowfall, Christmas 2012 may come up short. But measured by the spirit of giving, this holiday season looks to be as generous as ever. While bars of Little Star of Bethlehem and Jingle Bells wafted on the airwaves in shopping malls this week, three wise men of Hamilton and Wenham joined forces for a trip to BJ’s Wholesale Club. Their mission; not to stock their own cupboards but to stock those of others, those they don’t know and may never meet. “It’s Dr. Bryant Barnard who should get the credit for it,” said Hamilton’s Chet …

Why build a house of gingerbread? The answer may as well be because it has always been done, or at least since 1812 when the gingerbread house of Hansel and Gretel described by the Brothers Grimm excited the minds of all who read their story. Regardless, the building and displaying of gingerbread houses has become an institution at Wenham Museum, which is hosting its fifth annual Gingerbread contest in this - its 90th year. This year's theme is "North Shore Landmarks." Judging from the number of entries as of Thursday – up to 19 with the arrival of a handsome rendition of Henry’s Market of …

Vision is the key to most notable achievements - an idea coupled with the drive to see it realized. By extension visionaries are a priceless resource, a resource of which Hamilton and Wenham hold a healthy supply. Essex Country Trail Association’s newly established Sagamore Hill trail shines the light on two such visionaries, landowner John Donovan and Essex County Trails Association founder Susanna Colloredo-Mansfeld. A week ago, over 100 people participated in a guided hike over the latest edition to ECTA’s trail system - the Donovan/Sagamore Trail. Organized to celebrate what amounts to a …

Many live as if in a fairytale. They hold out hope that Prince Charming will kiss them awake, that if they wish hard enough a shower of gold dust will fill their cupped hands. In a fairytale a witch, newt or a wand-wielding wizard will make the wish come true - but not without exacting a cost. Sarah Lauderdale knows this well. Not a witch or wizard per se - Lauderdale is a reference librarian at Hamilton-Wenham Public Library. And in the month of November she will help many to realize a long-held wish - the wish to become a novelist. And what will she require of these people? All will have to…

Wars aren’t started between sips of tea - poems are. So thought Amy Job, who opened Jolie Tea Co. six months ago in downtown Hamilton. A shop is for selling products, but in starting her business Job wanted to do something more, something to foster art and ideas. “I’m an underground Francophile,” said Job, explaining her motivation. “I’ve always loved the French café society and I want to try it here.” Part of that has been the the creation of “Jolie Tea Company Salon.” “It’s community outreach," she said, adding that it happens after shop hours. "There’s no charge." The shop has been "kind …

Fans of Hamilton’s Jolie Tea Co. may well find something - or rather someone - new to fawn over later this month. Performing on Friday Sept. 30 at the second of the company’s ‘salon nights’ will be local, award-winning singer and songwriter Courtney Reid. A Virginian by birth, Reid currently calls Gloucester home but spends her days in Hamilton where she teaches painting and drawing at the Art Center. “She was my art teacher. For about four years I took art lessons from her,” Jolie Tea Co. owner Amy Job said of multi-talented Reid on a recent afternoon. As fate may have it, however, Reid’s …

Annette Bongette has her priorities straight. Tops are children and horses; the order however is sketchy for the the owner of Seven Acres Farm in Hamilton. For this, the explanation appears to be that all are loved in equal measure, especially those with a bum leg, blind eye or other bodily impairment. The story of Seven Acres Farm is simple, as Bongette’s tells it. “I had to buy the place so my horse could retire,” she said. That was in 1994 but the involved horse is the question. Seventeen years later a number of equine retirees chew at hay and lie about in the farm’s many paddocks. “Once I…