Adventuring through Canterbury

This historic town offers nourishing local farms and industries

BY BARBARA RADCLIFFE ROGERS / PHOTOGRAPHY BY STILLMAN ROGERS

The Shakers were part of the fabric of Canterbury almost from its beginnings. The first converts began meeting only 55 years after the town was granted in 1727, and by the time the Canterbury Shaker Society was founded in 1792, more than 40 of them were living on Benjamin Whitcher’s farm. That 100-acre farm became the Canterbury Shaker Village.

Shakers here had a different relationship with the town than Shakers in other places. Unlike Shaker communities that began with groups moving into a town, Canterbury’s Shakers were largely home-grown. So instead of the mistrust, suspicion and ridicule that Shakers met elsewhere, here they were treated as the neighbors they’d always been. Many were from prominent local families; one of their leaders was Henry Clough, son of Canterbury’s first settler, Capt. Jeremiah Clough.

Canterbury was already a thriving town. By 1750, more than 30 families had settled here, carving farms out of the forested hills. A road was built from Durham, and Canterbury had a fort and a trading post where native people exchanged furs. At the time of the Revolution, Canterbury had blacksmith shops, saw and grist mills, schools, taverns and stores. By 1786, the population stood at 860.

Most were farmers, some were artisans and others operated small industries. Many were a bit of everything. Although the sawmills, blacksmith shops and coopers are long gone, Canterbury still nurtures its farms and small family businesses.

The Shakers were known for their fine workmanship, making wooden and metal ware, furniture, boxes, farm tools, brooms, handwoven fabrics, clothing and fancy-work, some of which they sold to outsiders. Canterbury Shakers left a legacy of crafts and furniture still admired today.

Fine hand-crafted furniture is still made in Canterbury, in the cabinetry studio of David Lamb on Shaker Road. Although his designs are inspired by 18th-century European styles and not those of the Shakers, Lamb’s work shows the same attention to detail of fine cabinetmaking. Forms are reminiscent of fine antiques for their graceful lines, exquisite use of wood grain, inlay and carved details, such as flowers or ferns that appear to grow organically from the wood of a table leg.

The farming that was essential to the lives of early settlers and the Shakers is still alive in Canterbury, as are other small family businesses that have found a nurturing community.

Since 1969, Fox Country Smoke House has been producing bacon, smoked salmon, kielbasa and smoked cheeses. Just around the corner on Baptist Hill Road, Steven Allman opened Canterbury Aleworks in 2012, brewing “worldly beer with hyper-local flare” in a wood-fired brewery. In the tasting room, open on weekends, he explains his unique brewing process and has more than a dozen brews on tap. Among them might be an old Bavarian peasant beer, or a British countryman’s beer brewed with English toffee. Allman’s Granite Ledge Stout is brewed with Granite Ledge Coffee beans, roasted in Canterbury. Granite Ledge began in the 1990s, when

Christopher Evans roasted coffee beans in an iron skillet heated over an electric oven, selling them at a farmstand down the road. Today, he roasts specialty-grade beans in a state-of-the-art system sourced from farmers around the world, selling wholesale or direct to customers by mail.

Newer in town is Cold Garden Spirits, where, in 2016, Greg Meeh set up a distillery in the barn of his childhood home on Shaker Road and began producing bourbon and eau de vie from locally sourced fruits and grains. The latest is his sour cherry eau de vie, made with cherries grown on the property. Working with his brother Tim, at North Family Farm, Meeh produces maple bourbon, while Tim and his wife Jill use retired bourbon barrels to age their unique bourbon-aged maple syrup. The only place to taste and purchase Cold Garden’s spirits is at the distillery, open Saturday afternoons.

A fall tradition for families, Hackleboro Orchards grows apricots, peaches, nectarines and plums, but their claim to fame is PYO apples. On September and October weekends, the orchards are filled with families pulling wagons piled high with shiny red apples, seeing the land via hayride, petting baby animals and munching cider doughnuts. Food trucks and picnic tables encourage visitors to spend the day.

Other Canterbury farms are less participatory but equally active. The 600-acre Brookford Farm sits alongside the Merrimack River, where owners Luke and Catarina Mahoney raise certified organic vegetables, chickens and grass-fed beef and lamb. The creamery produces yogurt and farmstead cheeses, sold along with