Ken and NH,

Sounds like we are talking about forensic ecology. A favotite topic of mine. My wife tells me the original owner/builder of our house was Dutch. The house is an Adams colonial. Thats John Adams, one of the founding fathers of the American revolution. She says that by the time this house was built, many of the european tradions had become Americanized. The original owner was an agent for several land companies that were selling land along the soon coming Erie canal. I often wonder why he picked this site(remote) and up on a knob, to build. We have remnants of all kinds of things. Two apricot trees. Apple trees in the woodlot. Lots of them. And of course grapes. We have the wild variety but the boys noticed that some of them were full-sized concords. Thats when I did some research on old self-sustaining farms. The house is surounded by sugar maples, some as old as the house. We are boiling that sap down as I type. There are several springs near the house and that may be the reason we are here. He also built the house way off the road, but near the fields/orchard/springs. That is unfortunate for us right now because we just got over 20 inches of snow! The original barn is gone, not sure of the story behind that. As I mentioned in another posting, my boys and I are rebuilding and that is why I found the guild.
I learned in school that immature and sick trees will hold their leaves. Also trees that are sick or old will put all of their energy into fruit/seeds before they die.
Of interest to us is the fact that an elephant is buiried here. Once the Erie canal was put through, this area of Pennsylvania, near Lake Erie, became a wintering site for circus performers. Two of them owned this farm at different times. One of them was the world famous clown, Dan Rice, who dressed up as Uncle Sam around the time of the Americam civil war. He eventually moved into town and married the mayors teenage daughter. What a scandal. Forgot to mention the rhubarb. Got it beside the granary.

Greg


Greg