BELLEFIELD MANOR FARM The Manorkill Valley in the northern Catskill Mountains is one of New York’s most remote and beautiful mountain valleys. The long, winding road that follows the Manorkill Creek was once a narrow Indian trail, before it became the busy Susquehanna Turnpike. Just past a general store and an old cemetery we find the farmhouse of Annick de Bellefeuille, a writer, and Dr. Rhodes Adler. Originally constructed in 1790 for one George Humphrey, the house was a tavern that sheltered farmers coming from overcrowded parts of New England on their search for new lands to farm. It also provided a gathering place for local farmers to meet, discuss business, trade, and imbibe, as well as a stopover for drovers bringing their flocks or herds down the mountain to market in the town of Catskill on the Hudson River. For more than 150 years, the fields in the valley provided crops such as buckwheat, rye, and corn. The handsome barn, which sits directly across the road from the house, was restored by a local craftsman using early barn-building techniques and materials recycled from other old farm structures. The couple now holds potluck dinners there, where neighbors gather and enjoy the views of Huntersfield Mountain through barn doors thrown wide open. The couple purchased the farm in 1987 and sought to reveal the original character that lurked beneath multiple layers of remodeling. “We wanted rooms with the huge 12
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Heated by a wood stove, the kitchen is ornamented with a frieze of Mexican folk pottery, the colorful accents enhanced by the bright blue of the shelf and the green of the kitchen set. A common trait of these homeowners is their love of the eclectic, which epitomizes the farmhouse aesthetic. Wooden cutting boards are set to dry on a stone bench.
B OT TO M R I G H T
The interiors of the house were remodeled TO P R I G H T
in 1908 when Bill
The Emmonses’ dining
Emmons’s grandfather
room, features a dining
purchased the farm.
set with rushseated
The parlor’s woodwork
chairs and stenciling
was added with
on the walls rendered
high, raisedpanel
in the house’s original
wainscoting and built
style. The wood trim in
in window benches
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this room is composed
and bookshelves.
The staircase in the
of bull’seye corner
The Emmonses have
front entry hall still
blocks and fluted
furnished the house
follows the turns of
casings. The portrait
over time with some
the early nineteenth–
on the wall is of Bill’s
eighteenth century–
century Cape that
mother, and along the
style pieces such as
comprised the original
mantel are a series
bowback Windsor
house. In Cape Cod
of graduated pewter
chairs, a comfortable
houses, the vestibule
mugs. Pewter vessels,
sofa, needlepoint
is a buffer to keep cold
plain and sturdy, were
pillows, and a neo
air from the rest of the
often sold doorto
Colonial coffee table.
house. A cloakroom
door by peddlers
Geraniums bloom
off the hall is used for
and tinkers in rural
on stands in the bay
hats, coats, umbrellas,
America.
window.
and walking sticks.
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C LO U D L A N D FA R M
C LO U D L A N D FA R M
57
TO P L E F T
In a corner of the living room, a chestnut country desk serves its timehonored function of keeping current matters readily at hand while securing paperwork and records behind its doors. Surrounding the desk are eighteenth and nineteenthcentury paintings and drawings. B OT TO M L E F T
In a work shed, a cabinet with glass doors, originally an office piece, presently displays an intriguing collection OPPOSITE
of nineteenthcentury
In the secondstory
regalia such as lamp
hall, Ivan and Marilynn
parts, advertising
have mounted
ashtrays, canning
fascinating and
jar lids, folded flags,
instructive early maps
pictorial cigar boxes,
of the United States
medals, gameboards,
and New York. The
and, as Ivan puts it,
bedrooms are accessed
“odd bits too poetic to
through this gallery.
be discarded.”
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T H E KA R PS ’ FA R M H O US E
T H E KA R PS ’ FA R M H O US E
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B OT TO M L E F T
Reading was traditionally and continues to be an important rural pastime. Some farmhouses keep well thumbed copies of the classics on corner tables and bedroom shelves. This is not the case with Norman and Graham, whose commodious library shelves are stacked with books on gardens, antiques, and local
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history. The wing chair
With walls painted
TO P R I G H T
was selected for its
a dramatic crimson,
Attic bedrooms,
reading comfort, and
this corner of the
formerly occupied by
an oriental taboret is
big kitchen features
servants, were often
close at hand.
antiques from many
repositories for odd or
eras, like an old brass
mismatched furniture
B OT TO M R I G H T
and iron daybed and
that had fallen from
A roundheaded
a primitive desk. A
current fashion or
Palladian window
tiny wooden corner
become worn from use
overlooks the parterre
cabinet is suspended
but were not discarded
garden, which is
from the paneling,
outright. This chamber,
enclosed within a
and the fireplace
now used as a guest
weathered picket
mantel is ornamented
room, is built into the
fence and gates.
with assorted brass
eaves of the hipped
Popular in the late
items such as an old
roof and combines a
eighteenth and early
pushup candlestick.
variety of antiques, a
nineteenth centuries,
Within easy reach
rug, and a patchwork
this architectural
are an assortment of
quilt into a vignette
element was often the
fly swatters, a much
that seems unchanged
focal point of Georgian
used implement of the
in a century.
facades.
farmhouse kitchen.
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HUDSON BUSH
HUDSON BUSH
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SYLVESTER MANOR There are, at best, a handful of farming estates in North America whose history may be traced back, through eleven generations of a single family, to the year that it was first settled by colonists. Sylvester Manor, situated on Shelter Island, New York, is such a place; additionally impressive is the fact that it remains a working farm today. Now encompassing 243 acres, the property originally spanned all of this entire 8,000 acre land mass, which is located between the eastern forks of Long Island. The manor house, constructed in 1735, has several outbuildings; one of the most notable is a wind-powered gristmill that was built in 1810 and moved by barge to the island in 1839. As the manor’s landscape was described in a 1923 address to a historical society, “It was like a Southern estate with its row of outbuildings—the granary, the woodshed, the ice house, the smoke house, the corncrib, the stable, the henhouse and poultry yards, the carriage house and piggery.” Today, there is a privy, still standing, constructed in the same Georgian style as the house. Sylvester Manor has a storied agrarian past. Before its European owners started farming it in 1652, the land was a Native American encampment, where it is believed that corn, squash, and beans were grown and stored in grasslined pits. The first European settlers developed the land as a provisioning plantation; during the Enlightenment, it became a farm, and then later was the home of one of the first 164
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The grand Georgian residence known as Sylvester Manor, with its distinctive overhanging roof and symmetrically winged porches, was constructed in 1735. Today, it remains the center of a working farm that encompasses 243 acres of fields, forests, gardens, and estuaries and dates back to 1651, when Nathaniel Sylvester and his family first arrived. Over the course of more than 350 years, the manor has transitioned from a slaveholding plantation to a nonprofit educational farm.