MOVING IN

After seeing the place in September of 2012, I returned in June of 2013 to look at comparable properties. I found a few, but kept coming back to The Standish Farm. Truth be told, I felt some fine old energy flowing from the land into my feet and body.

The Farm was calling me.

I checked it out again, this time with a more critical eye, and hinted that I wanted to make an offer. The realtor was wonderful to work with and the family was game, since few wanted a tiny house (985 s.f.) with such apparently broken-down outbuildings. Besides, it was in the middle of the woods on Preston Ridge, and though only four miles from Norwich and three from Foxwoods Casino (the largest in the world, or so they told me, though that was hardly a selling point), it was so remote as to be in the Maine woods on the Canadian border.

The location suited me just fine.

While on the June trip, I was offered a job with Early New England Restorations, a company that does high-end millwork and total Colonial restorations.

My magic was working very well indeed.

I made and offer, the family that owned it bit, and I upended my life and made what I hope to be my last move.

Packing my own trailer with my shop, lumber, and household goods, I carted four dogs across the country to start my new life.

 

                        Dogs wondering what the hell is going on as I pack the house in Arkansas

                               28 foot trailer packed (and I mean PACKED) to 3/4 full

                                                        Home at last, late October 2013

Early November after leaves fall. First order of business; remove the 1960s topiary from the 1690 house. Second order of business; feed the hungry birds.

 



Chestnut slab found in garage rafters being cut and sanded to become new counter in kitchen, which is sorely needed. Note Cheesedog trying to lord over Specklepup in background.

Slab after installation and finishing with Danish Oil. Note the huge circular saw kerf marks.

 

 Kitchen expansion begins. The longleaf pine floor was covered with layers of linoleum, thankfully laid dry wit no mastic. I'll refinish it in the summer of 2014.

 

Thanksgiving morning 2013. No hot water, no working stove, everything prepared on the grill outside

 

The Standish Farm getting ready for a VERY long winter on the day of the first snowfall, early December. It would be like this until mid-March, with the harshest winter seen in New England in memory.

 

 

First fire in the kitchen fireplace. Note the beehive oven above the wood bin. Missing its iron door, it holds kindling nicely. The fireplace is shallow and tall, lending to my belief it was built way after the house was originally constructed.

ARRIVAL

I decided to leave Arkansas after almost thirty years because I hate the heat there more and more every summer. Also the rednecks are multiplying. It used to be a bastion of progressive thinking in the South, but except for Little Rock and Eureka Springs, both which I've called home, it's as backwards as the lack of education could make it. I’ve had enough and seen enough. The state has served its purpose in my life. Besides, I already restored everything I wanted to there.

                                        Estevan Hall, Helena Arkansas; my last major restoration in Arkansas

I sold everything, got some help from some great friends and relatives, and after two years' worth of research, trips, and plans, bought this little three-acre farm with a scattering of broken-down outbuildings, a few old foundations, a pond, and a house originally built by the nephew of Myles Standish in 1690. The house has more changes than original fabric about it, but the central structure is true to its turn-of-the-seventeenth-century lines. It was built as a two-room house in 1690 but was soon lifted from the ground and a cellar dug beneath. A permanent chimney stack was installed with two fireplaces, one in the kitchen and one in the living room, and it was expanded into three rooms.

                                                     My first picture of the Standish House, September 2012

Most of this is tentatively dated to the early 1700s.

An addition to the south (left in the picture) was added in the (?) 1920s and another to the north in 1954 or thereabouts. A bathroom was cut from the back room sometime long after 1938 when the place became the home of the Izbickis, Polish market gardeners that had several greenhouses and tilled fields of much more than fifty acres. They grew tomatoes, cantaloupes, and other crops unknown to me.

Bertha Izbicki, the Matriarch, died many years ago, and her kids, all raised in the house and living within a few stones' throw, put the old homestead up for sale. Fixing it would be expensive and the sibs are all over sixty, so they waited for some fool from Arkansas to buy the place, which, after a year of starts and stops, I did.

These are pics I took while examining the property before the sale back in September of 2012.

                          The Garden Shed, complete with Poison Ivy and filled with Garbage

                                 The Swayback Barn. probably early-mid 18th Century

      Tons O' Junk, Garden Shed (but the lump under the tied-up tarp was a cast-iron wood cookstove)

                                                         Garage and Greenhouse

                                                                Greenhouse south wall

                                                     Timber-framed barn interior (with cheap repairs)

                                                 Mosquito-Breeding Operation (Pond)

                                                            Pencil-thin Road to The Farm

                                         Second floor. Note the wide chestnut floor planks

   Kitchen fireplace with old chestnut surround. Other wood is less than fifty years old, but looks good

                                This is the working part of the kitchen. Lots of counterspace!

 

Living room fireplace. Heart pine floor overlays a chestnut floor below. Kerosene tank on the hearth feeds the heater in the corner. Fireplace has an iron surround , probably late 19th century.

 

Schist cobble base for fireplace with hand-hewn timbers. Old well pump and expansion tank in the background, both abandoned for a more modern system.

 

 

THE STANDISH HOUSE IN SPRING

 

 

So many have asked for info on the restoration of the 1690 Standish House, I decided to give it its own blog. Like I'm not behind on the Architectural Vestiges blog and even more farrer behind on The Old House Doctor blog. I promise to catch them up.

But Spring is finally here after a horrendous winter, and I'm busy every day after work on Improving the property.

I'm going to try something different with this blog, though, More pictures and less prose.

I've much to do in retrospect, so bear with me.