Tour Brookdale Farm

#Middlebury

Rob Fenn will be on site during the Brookdale Farm tour to share the history of the farm and items like those pictured here. Ask him about the old scythe, right foreground. (Janine Sullivan-Wiley photo)

By JANINE SULLIVAN-WILEY

This year’s annual farm tour of Brookdale Farm (Fenn Farm) will be Saturday, Sept. 22, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m with a rain date of Saturday, Sept. 29. Visitors can enjoy tours of the farm grounds by Robert (Rob) Fenn, hot dogs expertly cooked by Malcolm Todt and provided by the Land Preservation and Open Space Committee (LPOS), and cider and donuts provided by the Middlebury Land Trust (MLT). There also will be a pumpkin raffle.

The various organizations offering treats illustrate the interesting collaboration Brookdale Farm represents. Thanks to the foresight of the Town of Middlebury and the MLT, it was purchased in a collaborative venture between the two. The town owns the property, while the MLT holds an agricultural conservation easement on it.

To make the collaboration yet more interesting, the town and the LPOS are responsible for upkeep of the land and the buildings. The farm itself dates back to the 18th century. It will remain essentially as it is, with its farmhouse and outbuildings surrounded by rolling fields and woodlands on almost 67 acres of land.

Upkeep of old buildings, as anyone who owns one knows, can be quite a challenge. You may have read over the past year about the travails of what to do about the siding and exterior of the main farmhouse. Due to previous treatment with linseed oil, the siding was a repainting conundrum.

Back and forth, expert after expert, idea after idea was considered and rejected as too unlikely, too expensive, or lacking authenticity. Again, there was collaboration, this time on the expense. The old siding was removed and replaced with new cedar siding which, to this writer, looks just like the old siding. Authenticity was preserved. You can check it out this year when the property (not including the home interior) is again open to the public – as it is one day every year.

If you have never joined former owner and current resident Rob Fenn on one of his tours, don’t miss this opportunity. He is a treasure trove of local history in general and the farm’s history in particular.

Ask him about the properties of chestnut lumber, the staple for barn construction until the chestnut blight wiped those trees from the New England landscape. In fact, all of the old beams (visible in the barn and milk shed) are from the chestnut trees that grew on the farm – chestnut trees that blanketed the hills until the blight wiped them out about 1916.

Take time to have Fenn talk about the old tools (such as the scythe in the picture) and vehicles. In the basement of the horse barn are the old hay wagon and tip cart – the latter being the horse-drawn precursor to a dump truck. Fenn can tell you stories from when he was a boy and they were in use, pulled by the family horses.

If you have children with you, ask them to look for places where a roof interior is different on the sides from the middle, or see if they can spot towers of guano, courtesy of the many barn swallows. The farm tour is yet another fun way to spend time here in our town, and it is free. To learn more about MLT properties, visit middleburylandtrust.org.