Putnam, NY: Family, Family Farms, and good neighbors

Sunset through the maple leaves looking out to our pond

Randy's dad grew up working on the old family dairy farm in Putnam every summer. He and his brothers used to take the train out from Spokane (changing trains by themselves in Chicago!). Over the years, the land has been divided up and sold off, but he recently passed the last 9 acres of it on to us. So we were very excited to finally get there.

Meeting the community and getting to know the land was really special. We had dinners and breakfasts with our neighbors, met the postmaster and the town clerk, and walked the forest getting to know our trees. The experience was amazing, enjoyable and largely positive, but really got us thinking about the plight of family farms and then, in turn, about the values and traditions of farming life.

The Lidgerwood Family farm

Randy's great-grandparents -- Roy & Jennie Lidgerwood -- ran a dairy farm in Putnam. How long the family had been doing that, we're not quite sure. But back in the day there were LOTS of dairy farms in the area. Roy, however, was what these days we'd call an entrepreneur. He "vertically integrated" and added more "downstream value" by bottling and delivering the milk instead of selling to a wholesaler. Here's a link to the 2-pager Bob wrote reflecting on his grandfather and the way he ran the dairy business.

Nowadays there really aren't any dairy farms in the Putnam area. Instead there are summer vacationers on Lake George and Lake Champlain and folks who work at the local paper mill, the hospital, in construction or at Walmart . . . but almost no one doing any farming. The old family barn is owned by a furniture maker and part time artist. The "old house" and a big chunk of the land is owned by the Huntington family -- who really couldn't be nicer. And most of the pasture is owned by the B&B down the hill who use it for hay. But there's no dairy farm.

Nonetheless, there's lots of life still in the land and the community. In addition to time spent walking around and learning about "our land", we had the good fortune to finally meet and get to know our neighbors. Which of course is the really special part.

Highlights of our time in Putnam included:

1. Dinner with the neighbors

2. Breakfast with the other neighbors . . . everyone invites us for a meal!

3. A tour of the woodworking shop now in the old Lidgerwood Barn.

4. Touring our little 9 acres . . . and trying to figure out where it begins and ends. In 1985 one corner of the property was listed, officially, as "Twin 20 inch maple tree" . . . Amazingly enough, we did find the remnants of that tree!

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Dinner at the Huntingtons: The Huntingtons were very close friends of my great-aunt Margaret (the last of my family to live on the farm) and they were really our "hosts" in Putnam. Craig & Leah not only had us to dinner, but also let us shower at their place and were an amazing source of information about the history of both the farm and Putnam. Leah's dad, Jeff, in particular has been a HUGE help with the farm. We're so so so fortunate to have gotten to know all of them. It's a case of my great aunt Margaret being such an amazing and helpful person -- a force of nature in the community -- and her good works being returned to us. Apparently she once told a Jeff,

"Don't pay me back, just pay it forward."

So I guess that's what they're all doing for us. . . and what we'll definitely do for others sometime down the road.

And I suppose that's as good a way as any to describe a lot of the ethic we've met in small towns like Putnam. These are pictures of the clan we took at the dinner, celebrating Leah's birthday

The Inn at Lake Champlain: On the east side of the property, Karl and Lani own the Inn on Lake Champlain (a B&B and sustainable farming effort down by the water) and had us over to breakfast. They've lived such wonderful and experimental lives it was amazing to get to know them and hear all about their sustainable farming plans. Every part of their 400+ acres seems connected to every other part. Between working the farm, running the Inn, giving riding lessons, trying to build an apple cidery, and probably 10 other projects that I can't remember AND raising 4 kids (including a 2 week old!), Karl and Lani are very very busy people. Yet, they were extremely gracious with the their time and advice. Here's a link to their website in case you're interested.

It seems like it's very easy to develop a connection to the land, but very hard to make a living off it . . . at least in this part of New York.

Going to Church in Putnam. Take a look at that beautiful, steepled church in the pictures below. My great-great-great-great grandfather, the Rev. Robert Isaac Law used to be the pastor there. He died in the pulpit, while preaching, at the age of 46 in 1861 . . . so Joan & I figured we really ought to attend church while we were there! Silke (Jeff's wife) was kind enough to introduce us to the whole congregation and we probably stayed for a whole hour afterwards having conversations with neighbors and other church members. They were incredibly happy to see us and we felt very at home. And I carefully avoided the pulpit just in case there was some kind of family jinx!

• Visiting Cris Shakeshaft and his woodshop in our old Dairy Barn. Cris has been working out of the old Lidgerwood barn for quite a while now. He's built out the hayloft with spots for all his woodworking equipment, the old milking floor houses all his wood storage, and has his own lumber mill in the side yard! . . . but really it's the years and years of photos and art projects on the walls that capture your attention. It's an amazing testimony to both his skill and his creativity.

This is just one example of the embellishments Cris has made to the barn. Needless to say, it wasn't my great grandfather who mounted the Rolling Stones tongue on the east side of the barn!

Below is just a tiny little glimpse of the inside of the barn. This first floor "basement" that used to be for milking cows but is now where Cris stores wood for future projects. His tools take up just as much space on the second floor.

Getting to know our 9 acres: On our last 9 acres there isn't a house (Roy & Jennie Lidgerwood's house burned down in '92), but there's a small dam that makes a pond. And there's an amazing hillside with snakes and frogs and woodpeckers and streams and porcupines and mud and moss and thistles. There was even an old eagle's nest on the telephone pole out front. In addition to all the walking around, we spent some good time just parked on the site of my great-grandparents house. Joan even christened the place by napping in her chair in the sun! And I confess I spent a good deal of time imagining what it might be like to rebuild a house there someday.

We had SO, SO, SO much fun getting to know the land, getting muddy and wet and "meeting" the trees, rocks, & animals. It really felt like a "home" by the time we left.

That's Joan napping in the first picture below. :-)

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HISTORY MOMENT: Here's a 360° view of all the land that used to be the Lidgerwood farm. Just the starting view and the ending view are of our little 9 acre hillside.

And here are a few pictures of the farm from the 1950s.

(We think that's Randy's dad on the tractor, behind the horses (with grandpa) and feeding the cow!)

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Thought for the Day:

From Both Randy & Joan:

"Good fences make good neighbors".

Apparently this is an old saying among farmers. Jeff Huntington brought it up as we were talking about poachers and the neighbors and lingering, bitter arguments over who can hunt and farm exactly where. Because our land has been vacant for so long, it's become many things to many people.

• It's where Darlene the town clerk used to turn around the school bus.

• It's where some kids go to park their cars and drink on Saturday nights.

• It's where some of our neighbors go to mow and take care of something they don't own just because it has SO many memories for them.

• It's where Karl & Lani's field has expanded to over the years because the property line isn't marked.

• And it's where a few hunters have set up a deer blind.

So it's time for us to make it looked owned and loved. We'll do a formal survey to mark the boundaries and then we'll put up a fence. Karl has even offered to split the cost of the fence on the east side because it'll make his life simpler as well. Karl will also make sure the hunters know to move their blind and Jeff will post the no hunting signs we need up to make sure everyone and the state of New York know how we want the land treated. Good fences make good neighbors. . . . And we'll pay their kindness forward.

I'm not sure how the fence thing applies to the nation at large, but it sure would be nice if there were more good neighbors in the world. :-)

. . .

In a similar vein, my friend Margaret, who's an English teacher at Menlo, was asking her seniors this week to read Emerson's essay Self-Reliance and to comment on his last line:

"Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of your principles." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

She asked her students what they would say are the principles that mean as much to them as Emerson's did to him.

Joan and I spent a dinner talking about this. While we could think of several good ideas for principles, we both kept coming back to her dad, Hal Vieau. Hal was a longtime member of the Optimist Club and, more than anyone we know, lived by the Optimists' Creed. And to our mind, it seemed the best set of principles to answer Margaret's question. So we thought we'd share them here as well.