Peter Cook Draft Bio
“Farming in the First Period,” a talk and discussion by Peter Cook, on Sunday November 20 at 4.00 pm in the Carriage Barn, Appleton Farms.
Presented by the Ipswich Historical Commission with The Trustees of Reservations as part of the annual celebration, “Ipswich is First…Period.”
Peter Cook is a nationally recognized expert on colonial agriculture. During his long career, Peter has served as chief curator of Plimoth Plantation, administrative director of Historic New England, and chief curator of the Bennington Museum. At Plimoth he established a program to breed early species of livestock. Today, Peter is a professor in the graduate program at Lesley University.
Peter and met his wife Nancy at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the 1980s when they were working on the ground-breaking exhibition New England Begins. Nancy was also at Plimoth Plantation, where she was the head of textiles and furnishings. Together Peter and Nancy run Tare Shirt Farm in Berwick, Maine, where they farm with 18th-century methods and where they specialize in the production of pre-industrial textiles and the breeding of early species of livestock.
