A Bit of History In the Making

 Living on an old hillside farm brings an awareness of the hard work and love that past generations have poured into it.  Every room in the farmhouse seems to have remnants of days long past. The wood floors have holes where drain pipes used to take the constant flow of water from the spring, to the basement, and then out to the barn, where it watered the animals. Lath and plaster walls reveal construction methods long past. Old linen wall paper peeks from behind modern day wall coverings. Wide wood paneling, from flooring in the attic, warms one of our B&B bedrooms. Ceiling beams tell stories of the men who hewed them by hand, and of staircases now gone. Even the basement reveals a long genealogy with names carved in the wooden posts. The old barn and surrounding property give a historical view of years of farming, with old rusted barb wire still stapled to trees, old wooden milking stanchions, and piles of rocks where stone walls and silos used to stand. 

GrandView Farm, one of the earliest farms in the town of Washington, Vermont dates back to its initial purchase by Asa Bacon in January of 1794.  According to family tradition, Asa and a brother came to Washington from Brookfield, Massachusetts, built a log cabin, sowed and planted a few crops, fenced them in, and returned to Massachusetts to gather their families.  Through the years, the farm passed from the Bacon family to the Abbott family, then to the Royce family, before being sold two more times as a vacation home. 

A walk down the road to the old cemetery, tells the story of these families with gravestones dating back into the 1700’s. The graveyard sits nestled among tall trees just beckoning you to enter. A well kept wire fence protects the ancient gravestones that honor those lives from long ago. 

We are the fourth family to own Grand View Farm in the past 220 years, and have worked hard to reestablish some of its rich agricultural history, and to share it with our farmstay guests. The barn, which stood empty for over 50 years, now provides shelter for our chickens, sheep, and bunny. Gnarly apple trees have been brought back to life, garden beds and pastures restored, and fencing replaced. 

As you walk back up the hill from the graveyard towards our old dairy barn, you can see the fruit of our labor, and the little bit of history that our family will leave behind one day.