Category Archives: Land

Outbuildings #2 – The Pig Pen

The real work on the farm happened in the barn, in the fields, and in the house. Some of the outbuildings were so specific in purpose that they were often hastily erected and as quickly abandoned when seasons or activities changed. Others had longer lives and a more major presence. They were spread out around the property in an almost haphazard way. A few of them I remember from childhood, but others I know only from photos. – Outbuildings #1

The Pig Pen

“Pig Pen,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

My father took a movie of me when I was about three years old. Dressed in a red coat with a hood and red leggings, I fed the pigs bread crusts, carefully taking each piece out of a basket and sticking it through the slats of the pig pen.

Kept far from the house, this pen moved several times while I was young. The pigs smelled funky, and their dirt “floor” became a muddy mess after months of occupancy. The pigs were born, were fed until they were nice and fat, and then butchered in the open shed behind the house. My mother, when she was a little girl, hid in her room with a pillow over her head when the pigs were brought from the pen to the shed.

My grandparents gave up raising pigs when I was young, and took the pig pen down. But on that same property my uncle Aaron built a house for his new wife Barbara. His daughter Patti told me that after all those years of pig habitation, the soil was rich and dark and perfect for gardening.

On Monday: Walking Down the Lane

The Tree

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“Tree,” Carol Crump Bryner, woodcut

In October 2001, I traveled east to visit my parents. The trip I’d always taken for granted had, after 9/11, come to seem like a miracle. I got on the plane in Anchorage, and eventually got off in Hartford, but it wasn’t until we reached the reservoir and I could see the lights on Whirlwind Hill that I felt the enormous joy and relief of being back home.

After that visit I sent an article to a feature at the Meriden Record. The piece was printed in January 2002, and I’ll reprint it here. The newspaper titled it “And the Tree Lives On.”

“In early October, I made the long trip from my home in Anchorage, Alaska to my parents’ house in Wallingford, Connecticut. Although I haven’t lived in East Wallingford since 1967, I still feel most truly and securely at home there.

The farmland, which has been in our family since before the Revolutionary War, has stayed open and undeveloped. I feel lucky to be able to visit such a timeless treasure and grateful to my relatives for keeping it that way year after year. Each time I come home I walk down the lane and up the hill to sit under my favorite tree. It’s silent there and beautiful, and I’m cheered to see the tree still standing in glorious isolation.

On one of my visits, my aunt told me that when my uncle was a young boy helping his father on the farm, he asked to have a tree planted here. During the long days of summer work he wanted to have a shady spot to put the water jug. Since then the fields have been almost continuously farmed. It must be a nuisance to mow, plant, and harvest around the tree, especially now that water jugs stay cool on their own. The fact that the tree has endured comforted me as I sat under it on October 8, trying to find balance in increasingly unsettling times.

As an artist, I collect images that connect me to the people and places I love. This year when I visited, the tree was still dressed in fall leaves, but in a few months it will look like this photo I took in March, 1972 – an example of the stark, powerful New England landscape I miss when I’m living so far way from home.” – Carol Crump Bryner, October 2001

The Tree, 1972

On Monday: Time

October Window

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The voices of my ancestors keep me company while I write these posts. Some days this process of living in the past makes me sad, and I feel all too mortal. But the cyclical nature of dying and birth, summer and winter, war and peace, loss and recovery, helps me understand these people who paved my way, and gives me clues about how to live my own life.

The strongest voice I hear is my great-grandmother’s. Lydia Jane Hall left me a cherished legacy – her words. She always said just enough. This October entry is her last. She died in 1926. But the joy of these cycles is that next month I can go back to an earlier year when she still had many more words to share.

“October Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Saturday, October 11, 1924 – “Nice cool morning. The foliage is changing. The winds are blowing, the bright colors are coming. Nature is putting on her bight robes. Beautiful but sad, when the change comes, we are passing on. ‘Time waits for no one.’ ” – Lydia Jane Hall

See also: April, May, June, July, August, September windows

On Monday: The Parlor

Barns – Part II

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When I was fifteen my parents bought land from my grandparents’ neighbors, Delevan and May Ives. What I didn’t know then, but have found out recently, was that the land where my parents built our new home in 1960 had once belonged to my Hall ancestors. Part of this property included a barn, which my dad used for the next thirty years to shelter his horses. In 2008, when the barn needed major repairs, my father and brother decided to have it taken down, restored, and relocated closer to the house.

“Crump Barn, around 1990,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2014

As George Senercia took down our barn, (see “Barns – Part I”) he realized that the same person who built my grandparents’ barn also built ours. The clues were in the way the timbers were hewn and the framing structured. George became convinced that my great-great-great grandfather Aaron Hall – who also built the barn on my grandparents’ farm – built our barn around 1810, some years before he constructed the barn farther up Whirlwind Hill.

By the time they started working on our barn in August 2008, George and his group, “Northford Timber Framers,” had restored over fifty barns in New England. The work is done by volunteer labor – men and women trained by George in his weekend workshops. George, who had a heart transplant in 2004, makes each barn raising a spiritual experience. For him the old timbers are the “Heart of the Barn,” and give life to the new structure in the same way his new heart gave life to him.

It took two years to clean, sort, and prepare the framing and build the new foundation. All the work was done slowly and thoughtfully, carving numbers into each timber to facilitate the putting-back-together. To put the barn back together, timber framers used tools and methods that would have been employed in 1810. Hand-carved pegs took the place of nails, and manpower the place of cranes and forklifts.

Hand-carved pegs

New and old parts were joined together simply and solidly.

Wooden peg joining new and old timber

Some of the timbers (each made from an individual tree) were long and very, very heavy. To lift them, the workers used pulleys, chains, and stone counterweights. Our counterweights were named “Fred” and “Barney.”

Fred

Barney

On a very hot weekend in July 2010, my brother and father and I held our barn raising.

Carol, Charlie, and Kirt – morning of barn raising

Cousins and friends and workers came from all over New England and around the country. Among the hundred or so people there, sixty were volunteers who worked for two days in the intense heat. The rest of us watched, took pictures, served food, ran errands, brought water, and cheered the progress.

To big cheers, workers raised the first bent on Saturday morning.

Raising of the north bent

Work progressed throughout the weekend. It took as many as twenty people to lift one beam.

Getting ready to lift the beam into place

On Sunday afternoon the Stony Creek Fife and Drum Corps marched down Whirlwind Hill and up our driveway to play for a short christening ceremony in the new barn.

Stony Creek Fife and Drum Corps marching down the driveway.

George placed the American flag on the roof, and then we celebrated with food and drink and a huge cake covered with strawberries.

Crump barn on Sunday afternoon

For two days we were immersed in an unforgettable experience. The past and the present met on this spot, and time seemed to slow down. Now the barn looks like this.

Crump Barn, 2013

As a memorial to my ancestor, George carved Aaron Hall’s name into one of the restored timbers. Every part of this barn has meaning, but for me the barns are not the same barns they used to be.

George, with his new heart, may very well be the same person he was before surgery, but for me, these are not the barns I knew. It’s a question I really can’t answer – this mystery of place. It’s all well and good to say that you have restored a structure and it “lives again,” but for me, the heart has gone out of the barn.

Where I find this heart is in my memories and in the pictures that remind me of the life the barns once held. The most magical moments in the Hall barn came each year on Easter Sunday, when my brother and cousins and I were let loose in the haymow to search for the painted eggs that my Easter Bunny grandfather hid. I can smell the hay, see the shafts of light piercing the dust, hear the swallows swooping in and out of the high window to their nests in the rafters, and feel the excitement of finding a hidden egg. We were never able to find all the eggs our grandfather hid, but when George dismantled my grandparents’ barn, he found nestled in the hay brightly colored eggs left behind so many years before.

Cousin Sue and Carol, Easter Sunday, 1949

On Friday: October Window

Money and Apples

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I always liked the idea that earning money on the farm was a last resort – that a farm should be able to sustain itself without cash. But after reading my great-grandfather William E. Hall’s journals, I can see he thought often about making, having, and spending money.

He filled the back pages of his diaries with columns of figures and notes about what he spent and what he earned. The last page of his 1861 journal looks like a daydream about dollars.

Page from journal of William E. Hall, 1861

His notes record that he sold a load of wood for $10 and spent $10 on his new teeth. His 1864 diary cost 25 cents, a postage stamp 6 cents, and a telegraph 30 cents. The sale of a cow earned $12.50 and a load of hay $28.75. There was the purchase of the mysterious “dog candy” for 45 cents. Some cotton cloth cost $16.20, and a new buggy relieved him of a whopping $45.00.

The record of farm goods and produce he sold for cash includes cows, oxen, hogs, horses, hay, buckwheat, wood, milk, butter, eggs, hard cider (my great-grandfather also had a still), peaches, and apples. The list of purchased items is much, much longer.

“Modern Apple,” Carol Crump Bryner, ipad painting

For years apples were a major source of revenue because, unlike peaches, they could be stored in a root cellar and sold throughout the winter.

Monday, October 5, 1914 – “Men busy picking apples, selling them. The trees are many of them loaded. Not very large, but seem to be good and sound.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, October 7, 1914 – “Ellsworth sold his apples for 35 cents a bushel, to be carried off by the seventh of December.” – Lydia Jane Hall

My great-grandfather William’s 1873 diary includes names of apples he may have grown or thought about growing. (There are about thirty varieties on his list, but I’ve had to leave out some and guess at others because his writing is hard to decipher.)

Pown Sweets
Peck’s Pleasants
Stripe Pippins
Gilliflower
Maiden Blush
Wine Apple
New Town Pippin
Bell Flower
Roxbury Russets
Fair Maine
English Sweets
Hall’s Seedlings
James Linds
Citron Apples
Lord Thorntons
Baxter Greenings
Rome Apple
Black Pearmain
Fall Pippins
Roderick Greening
Red Stripe
Balmunds
Ruck Apples

I have no idea what kind of apples my mother is eating in this photo, or whether they were grown on the farm. In 1943 when my dad took this portrait of my mom in the fields below the farmhouse, there were probably still apple trees around, but I have a feeling the apples in the photo came from Young’s Apple Orchard, which was at the top of Whirlwind Hill. The orchard was still in business when I started living in Alaska in 1969, and I remember going there to buy apples one fall when I was visiting my parents. Mr. Young packed them up for me and shipped them all the way to the 49^th State. What would my great-grandfather have thought of that!

Janet Hall Crump, 1943

On Monday: The Room with Nine Doors

The Muddy River Schoolhouse

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At the foot of Whirlwind Hill, where the MacKenzie reservoir now beckons ducks, geese, swans, turtles, and hopeful fishermen and women, there was once a school. In 1810 the Muddy River Schoolhouse was built in the Wallingford, Connecticut School District No. 8, and the one-room building sat on this same spot until 1932 when plans were made to dig the new reservoir.

MacKenzie Reservoir, spring, 2014

For a hundred and twenty-two years this one-room school saw Wallingford schoolchildren come and go. As many as thirty students at a time from kindergarten to sixth grade spent their days in the company of one hard-working teacher, learning to read and write and cope with all the hardships and joys of wooden desks, chalkboards, and a single stove to provide heat in the winter. For at least a year my mother was one of those students. In a 1923 photo of the school, teacher, and students, she’s the sixth child from the left, her dark hair framed by the school doorway.

Muddy River Schoolhouse with teacher and students around 1923, Janet Hall sixth child from the left

I don’t know for sure how many of my ancestors started their educations there, but in 1861 or 1862 my great-grandmother Lydia Jane Hart came over the Totoket Mountains from Durham, Connecticut to be the teacher. Because the Hall farmland was on the uphill slope above Muddy River, I imagine my great-grandparents meeting for the first time somewhere on Whirlwind Hill. William and Lydia married in 1863, ending Lydia’s career as a teacher but beginning another generation of Muddy River schoolchildren.

In a 1998 Meriden Record article about the school, my mother, Janet Hall Crump, says, “I was pretty young, but I remember the fun things like Christmas time when we would decorate and all the parents would come,” she said. “I’m so glad I had that one year. It’s a rather interesting experience when you’re in a one-room schoolhouse. I am so glad I had that experience.”

But the year at the school that my mother remembers was a short-lived one. In January 1924 my great-grandmother Lydia recorded news of Janet and school.

Friday, January 4, 1924 – “A nice bright morning. Snow gone – no more sliding until more snow and ice come. Agnes has taken the children to school. Janet is at home. She has taken a notion she doesn’t want to go any more. Her mother is going to let her stay home until Spring.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Monday, January 14, 1924 – “Nice bright morning. Quite spring-like, tho we do not hear the birds. Children at school. Janet at home, cutting paper, etc. singing by herself.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, March 6, 1924 – “A very nice morning. Agnes taking the children to school. Janet outside with her daddy whom she likes to talk with, in the house playing with her dolls, coming with books for Grandma to read to her.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Wednesday, March 19, 1924 – “Nice day – warmer, more like spring. The children have been to school. Agnes has gone to bring them home. Janet is at home this winter. Goes to school next fall. She is as quick to learn as the others. She likes her daddy and likes to be out of doors with him.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Janet Hall with doll, around 1924

It must have been hard for my grandmother Agnes, who made such effort to get her children to school, dance lessons, music lessons, etc., to just let my mom stay at home for this half year. But it was such an important time for Janet. She never forgot the joy of being the “only child” for a few hours each day, of having her daddy all to herself, and of being a part of the daily farm routine. Later on, as a mother herself, she occasionally let my brother and me stay home from school when important things happened on the farm. My brother remembers being allowed to take “sick” days when heavy equipment was working nearby so he could watch the machines in action. And I often begged to stay home so I could go to the farm kitchen to watch my grandmother do the washing.

My mother did go back to school, but not to this little building at the foot of the hill. In the fall she joined her brother and sister at the school in town. She was a good student, and she graduated from Lyman Hall High School. In this high school photo I can still see the little girl who liked to follow her daddy around the farm.

Janet Hall’s High School photo

In 1932, instead of tearing the school down to make way for the dredging of the reservoir, the town of Wallingford gave it to Oscar Williams, a farmer living on nearby Williams Road. Oscar hired Fred Audisio (who was paid in eggs since Oscar Williams raised chickens) to put a chain on the building and drag it up Williams Road to his farm where it sat mostly intact until 1998. It was then donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust and disassembled for storage. It was supposed to be moved and reassembled on another site, but as far as I know, that has never happened. The Muddy River Schoolhouse may still be in pieces in a barn on Williams Road. It’s another mystery for me to solve, and if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.

The earliest depiction I’ve seen of the schoolhouse is a watercolor by Mary E. Hart (or possibly a copy of her painting made by Melissa Hall) that hangs in my parents’ dining room on Whirlwind Hill. Until a few months ago I thought this was a painting of the Hart Homestead in Durham, but my brother told me its subject is the Muddy River Schoolhouse. I was amazed that I’d looked at this picture for so long without really knowing what it was. For me this discovery was like having a ghost step out of the past and say “howdy!” In the painting, done around 1860 or 1870, the school still has white clapboards. Next to the schoolhouse is the bridge over the river at the bottom of Whirlwind Hill. In the background, on the far side of Muddy River, the painter has brushed in the lush spring blooms of the Hall orchards.

“Muddy River Schoolhouse,” Mary E. Hart, watercolor

On Wednesday: Painters in our Family

September Window

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September is a bittersweet month. Summer wanes, the sun casts longer shadows, and the foliage seems to look tired as it stores energy for its fall extravaganza. Lydia refers to this time of year as the start of the melancholy days – a time for going inside.

“September Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

September 16, 1913 – “A nice cool day. Am sorry to have the melancholy days come, when all shut-ins have to be housed. ‘I love the good old summer time.’ Still getting potatoes. Ellsworth went down to Delevan Ives’ place to a corn roast. The Oyster Club.” – Lydia Jane Hall

September 28, 1914 – “A very nice cool fall day – Edgar’s [her oldest child’s] birthday, very much the same kind of a day – fifty years old – it doesn’t seem possible that so many years have flown by since then. So they go and children & grandchildren and great-grandchildren come to us – all we hope to be useful men and women.” – Lydia Jane Hall

September 26, 1921 – “Nice day. Men busy gathering apples. Agnes took Lydia to school – all had a ride. Mr. Biggs [my great-grandfather] fixing the flowers, tying up the dahlias, helping Ellsworth with the apples. All busy baking, getting meals, etc. Many hands make light work! All well and happy, seemingly.” – Lydia Jane Hall

See also – April, May, June, July, August Windows

On Monday – The Muddy River Schoolhouse

Outbuildings #1 – The Silo

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Most of the real work on the farm happened in the barn, in the fields, and in the house. But other jobs required outbuildings that were specific in purpose and sometimes hastily erected and as quickly abandoned when seasons or activities changed. Others had longer lives and a more major presence. They were spread out around the property in an almost haphazard way. A few of them I remember from childhood, but others I know only from photos.

The Silo

September 27, 1924 – “A nice month so far for gathering in the crops which have been quite plentiful. They are now filling the silos. They have put up another silo to make room for all the corn. Edith has been quite helpful in helping them to spread corn in the silo dressed in Ellsworth’s uniform. Three or four days more will finish the corn. The potatoes are good. Apples are nice. Bill [hired man] is taking the apples to Hew Haven once a week, selling them by the load.” – Lydia Jane Hall

The barn on the farm had two silos, but it’s this one I remember most vividly. In mid-summer the men filled it with corn (or maybe hay and grasses – I’m not sure what they put in it) that in a week or so started fermenting and becoming silage to feed to the cows. If you’ve never smelled silage you’re missing one of the olfactory wonders of the world. I don’t think there is anything that smells as nasty as silage, and that’s the truth.

“Silo,” Carol Crump Bryner, pen and ink, 2013

On Friday – September Window

Peaches

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Whirlwind Hill was once crowded with trees whose lavish spring blossoms ripened into round, bright fruit in late summer. The orchards that were already starting to diminish in the 1950’s are completely gone from the hill now, replaced by fields of hay, acres of new houses with long driveways and tidy lawns, and a winery and vineyard.

“Orchards in Spring,” Carol Crump Bryner, ipad painting, 2013

For many years peaches brought work and cash to my ancestors. There were apple orchards on the farm for decades when, sometime after 1875, my great-grandfather, William Ellsworth Hall, introduced peaches. But by around 1920 my grandparents were concentrating on dairy cows and apples, and the peach trees were few.

In 1912 my great-grandmother still writes about selling peaches.

Wednesday, August 21, 1912 – “Another close day. Picking peaches. Sold twenty-four baskets for seventy cents a basket. Pretty good for the first.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Thursday, August 29, 1912 – “We have been very busy canning peaches besides our usual work. Canned eleven quarts. They look very nice.” – Lydia Jane Hall

By 1921, other farms on the hill had taken over the commercial selling of the crop.

Monday, August 29, 1921 – “A nice day, warmer. September days are coming. Apples and peaches are ripening fast. Large truck loads of peaches going past to the depot toward evening.” – Lydia Jane Hall

Saturday, September 10, 1921 – “Nice day and a busy one for all. Agnes has canned peaches pears & tomatoes. We have had all our peaches off the few trees that were left on the hill lot, which were very nice to eat and can.” – Lydia Jane Hall

For the past two years I’ve been slowly transcribing journals kept by my great-grandfather William. His journal entries tell me very little about him, and I’ve hesitated to try to sum up his life from sentences like this.

January 10, 1861 – “Went to New Haven with apples. Mother spent the evening at Widow L. Hall’s. Put up some cider in the evening.” – William E. Hall

January 11, 1861 – “Finish putting up cider.” Went to the mountain after wood in the afternoon.” – William E. Hall

But I learned more about him through a speech and poem he wrote to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Wallingford Grange. Paper-clipped to the speech was a letter of sympathy to my family from the Grange written after William’s death in 1920. In this letter, the writers call my great-grandfather “The Father of the Wallingford Grange.” This photo of him as a young man was taken before he and thirty-one other people founded the town Grange in 1885.

William Ellsworth Hall, around 1875

Granges were organized to bring farmers together. It was through the Grange that Wallingford became home to so many fruit orchards. When I buy peaches at the farmers’ markets here in the Pacific Northwest, or buy beets and carrots at the markets in Alaska, I feel the same spirit that must have driven the early farmers of Wallingford to respect the land and to work together as a community to bring their produce to market. In his speech to the Grange, William said:

“Our hills are covered with fruit trees. Wallingford has come to be recognized as a center for great peach orchards. There is no fairer sight than the hills covered with blossoms, no more earnest sight than the industry of gathering and sending to market the product of our labor. For years much of this land had gone to waste. It has been recognized as pasture or at least, barren hill. But now there are everywhere vineyards and orchards. Our Grange has done more than its share toward bringing this about. Because from the first the organization has aimed to support conservation of all natural resources…Every possible precaution for preserving the soil should be taken, and the fact that no one has a right to become robber of the soil should be taught in the home, the school, the church, and the Grange. For in this and all other things we say, ‘The greatest good to the greatest number.’ ” – William Ellsworth Hall

“Blueberries and Peaches,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor and colored pencil, 1994

On Monday: The Porch

The Little House on the Hill

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“The Little House,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

When the little house moved from the glen to the hill, it left its bottom behind. The 1912 foundation was made from the large and abundant stones that both plagued and blessed most Connecticut farmers. The unending supply of rocks made difficult the plowing and planting of the fields, but easy the building of the walls. My great-grandfather William recorded “picking stones” as a frequent activity in the fields. The little house’s rocky footprint is still visible and accessible.

Kirt Crump at the glen house foundation, 2013

Yards away from the foundation sit two boulder-like stones. They cover an old well and keep animals and people from plunging into its depths.

Well stones, 2013

Sometime between 1925 and 1943 my grandfather and his helpers lifted the little house off its stone base, transported it through the orchard, and positioned it on a new cellar at the top of the farm’s hill lot. Red painted, white trimmed, and dormered, the little house seemed a cousin to my own house – the one my father built in 1946 on Center Street in Wallingford, Connecticut. I couldn’t find a photo of the little house on the farm, but you can get an idea of how it looked from this picture of my own childhood home.

The Crumps’ house on East Center Street, 1947

The little house on the hill was a dollhouse compared to the big farmhouse. In winter we climbed the pathway from the farmhouse driveway to the top of the hill. We borrowed big pots from my grandmother, saved pieces of cardboard from Christmas presents, gloated over new “flying saucers,” and fought over the prime sledding transport – the “Radio Flyer.” We took turns going up and down all afternoon with the promise of popcorn and hot chocolate in the farmhouse kitchen afterwards. The hill was short, but mighty. We often poured water on it to freeze a faster ride. Now, in my dotage, I feel sorry for my aunt, uncle, and cousins who had to walk up and down that hill after a Sunday afternoon of sledding. Ice is better for sitting down than for standing up.

Sledding on the hill, 1950’s

In 1943 my mother’s older brother Francis married Glenna and brought her to live in the little red house on his parents’ farm. My cousin and his family live there still.

Francis and Glenna Hall, 1943

In summer we walked up the hill to the red house in sweaty pursuit of popsicles. Our Auntie Glenna led us down the cellar steps into the cool dirt-floored basement and opened the lid of the deep freeze to find the fruity popsicles nestled in their metal beds. Our mothers made their own popsicles – grape, strawberry, orange, and lime. But Auntie Glenna’s tasted best. Care was taken not to stick a tongue onto the frozen metal mold. It was so tempting. Maybe that hint of danger, and the descent into the dimly lit cellar made the treat more special – or maybe it was the warm and cheerful welcome we always got from our sweet Auntie Glenna.

“Grape Popsicle,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2013

On Monday: Corn

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner