Couple works to learn history of historic Mason home

MONADNOCK Ledger-Transcript
Published on 6/14/2022

By ROWAN WILSON

At the end of Black Brook Road in Mason, the lush June forest opened up. The driveway skewed left and ran between a white clapboard home and a lawn lined with thick-trunked maple trees. To the right, a logging road ran into the forest. But straight ahead, slightly up a grassy incline where a welcome sign might sit, were two tombstones, rectangular chunks of granite stacked up the hill. The engravings on the two stones were well-worn and filled in with lichen. There was a border around each name.

Matt Cannon said, “That’s Elias Elliot and his wife.”

Elias built the home in 1762, and it was in the Elliot family for 157 years.

The house was owned by a few other families, and then at the end of March 2022, Matt and Amanda Cannon bought the Elliot homestead and moved in with their family and their business, Autumn Frost Farm. They’ve been busy building their farm back up on the new property, clearing the heavily weeded fields and dealing with predators preying on their chickens.

But they’ve also been curious.

Ever since arriving, the Cannons have been fascinated by their home’s history, and they’ve learned a lot in the last few months. They’ve been in touch with local historians and have been able to get documents and old deeds. They’ve uncovered discoveries inside the home and on their property and they are excited to continue to explore. Matt has started building a timeline for the farm’s website, adding information on the farmstead and the Elliot family as he learns more.

Although the Cannons can’t be positive the founding bodies are buried at the entrance to their home, they think there’s a good chance they really are. They discovered an Elliot family plot in a graveyard down the street, but these Elliots weren’t there.

The right side of the house was the original structure. The left side was added later, in the 1800s. The porch in the old section leads into the kitchen. It’s bright and clean. It feels fully functional as a modern kitchen, but there are elements that are undeniably older. Amanda peeled back the tablecloth and revealed thick boards, a row of nails. The table was made from the original floorboards. There’s a brick bread oven on one wall, added after the home was built, and the view over the sink looks out at a field recently cleared by the Cannons. A couple hundred years ago, Mitchell Hill Road would have run through that field and the house would have faced that direction.

Amanda pointed out what would have been the front door in the newer section, similar to the front door on the other side. “The two sides of the house sort of mirror each other,” she said.

Mitchell Hill Road is still an active road that connects to Wilton; it just doesn’t extend into the Cannons’ property anymore.

The majority of the 522 acres they now own in Mason is wooded land protected under a conservation easement. Amanda explained that the easement allows for forestry, agriculture and low-impact recreation like hiking. There’s a logging road that runs into the woods, eventually connecting to a trail that leads to the ruins of a grist mill. Just the foundation is left, hunks of granite built around a stream flowing from a pond up on higher ground. The mill would have had a water wheel.

“It was really breathtaking the first time we did this run,” Amanda said, looking down at the ruins hidden by the foliage. A little bit farther along the path was the remnants of a bridge that would have connected the grist mill to the house more directly from Mitchell Hill Road. The bridge had been built in the 1700s and collapsed during a storm. Now the huge stones sit in piles in the river on either side.

“You see these stones and think people must have moved all this by hand,” Matt said, “Just incredible.”

Matt started farming “because I wanted to know where my food was coming from,” he said. He and Amanda started Autumn Frost Farm in New Ipswich a few years later.

But “we were running out of space there,” said Amanda. So they started looking for a new home. “We thought we were going to have to go further for this much land,” she said.

The Cannons are excited about the space, but there’s a lot to maintain. Matt explained that the weeds are really invasive, he ran into poison ivy and “predators have been a huge problem.”

“There are foxes, coyotes, we’ve seen a bobcat,” he said. “There are fishers and a bear.”

The Cannons raise laying and meat chickens, along with turkeys, and will raise pigs again once they get the permit for their new land. Their goal is to create a local “butcher box” or a meat CSA. During the pandemic, Amanda started delivering orders and it has been successful.

“I tell everyone I live in the most-magical place on earth. They say, ‘Isn’t that Disney?’ No, it’s my house,” Amanda said.

Amanda and Matt are interested in learning more about the history of their home. If anyone has any information or photos, they can be contacted on their website, autumnfrost.farm.

https://www.ledgertranscript.com/Couple-timelines-history-of-farmstead-in-Mason-46743669

The Meat Birds Have Arrived

It was an exciting day for all of us here on the farm last Wednesday. The first batch of meat birds finally arrived. No one was more excited than Iasbelle to see the new chicks. She really loves when we get new babies. She is a great helper when it is time to set up their brooding boxes. She enjoys filling the waterers and pouring the food into the feeders. It's almost as cute to watch her sweep up the mess she makes as it is to watch her care for these little cuties. Earlier this week, she helped the big kids and I transfer them from the small boxes here in the house into the big brooders in the barn. These little ones won't stay tiny for long. In 6-8 weeks they will be ready to go. We are excited to be able to start delivering the roasters on July 1st.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

Well, it is growing time here on the farm. Last year, growing a garden was quite the disappointing endeavor. I came home one day from running errands, and to my surprise, I returned to find Matt had tilled the entire front lawn. As he sat there on his tractor, with that handsome smile of his, I thought with a chuckle "oh my, what has he done" while he was putting up and down each row. Although it was a shock at first, it really was the perfect place to start a garden of the magnitude that we were looking to grow. So, we got to it and planted tray after tray of seeds that went in the mini-greenhouse to germinate and grow...and there they sat. We had a dream, but not all dreams come true. An amazing 250 year old colonial farmhouse came up for sale down the street from us. It was beautiful. Well, to the right eyes it was beautiful. It was in need of complete renovation and was filled to the brim with trash, but to us, it was a hidden gem. Our realtor told us if we were to sell our home to purchase the colonial, we would have to regrow the lawn. So ,we reseeded the entire thing and the poor baby seedlings just sat. We didn't want to start a garden somewhere else in our yard and have to leave it when we moved. Wow, what a beautiful lawn we grew out there. It was the nicest lawn we'd had in all our years living here. It would all be worth it right? The house buying process should be fast and simple, right? Did you chuckle there a little? Me too! After eight months and lots of time, effort tears and emotions (I was pregnant, what can I say) , long story short, we decided to walk away from the house.

So, now on to this year. We were determined to get this garden going. We figured that the best way to have a large garden (about 60 x 40 feet) was to start early. We decided to build a greenhouse to allow all of our tiny seedlings the best chance to grow big and strong. Matt got right to work. He engineered a hoop house, after some research we had done online, from PVC tubing and we ordered some greenhouse film. We were able to get it put up and were just starting to install the channels that were to hold the film in place. We were in the process of installing them and there was a disaster. We had a huge storm packing gusty winds and torrential rain. Unfortunately, the film was not tight enough yet without the channels and the rain pooled between the supports. This caused catastrophic failure. The PVC connectors snapped under the pressure and the entire house collapsed. We tried to use the film and some tables to save the trays but only a few ended up sprouting. (Stay tuned for a blog about the trials and tribulations of building, failing and then rebuilding a greenhouse.)

After the greenhouse fiasco we had to quickly move onto the next idea. It was now warmer out and the threat of frost was beyond us. We decided direct sowing into the beds that Matt had made were our best bet. The whole family got together to get this plan into action. All of the kids came out to help, even the baby joined in her carrier. The kids took turns with each row, one poking the holes for the seeds, one placing the seeds into the hole, another covering them up, and of course one taking a break. lol. They always want a break. It took over 4 hours but we got it all sowed. We planted corn, green beans, roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, snap peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, onions, celery, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, ,spinach, lettuce, bell peppers, zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash, watermelon, pumpkins, and two kinds of cabbage. We will plant potatoes in boxes outside the garden. We might have gotten to a late start, but everything has sprouted (except the carrots and celery) and are looking great. The next step will be to get out there and thin the plants. When planting, you put more than one seed in each hole and then go through after to thin. You keep only the strongest plant from each spot and pluck out the smaller one. Matt even designed a watering system because we have found that watering is the hardest part when trying to maintain a garden. We will write more and explain this process in a future post. See below for some pictures of how things are goings so far, and stay tuned for updates as the season moves along. Happy growing!

Babies On The Farm

It's been a busy place here on the farm. There have been some great new arrivals here to share with you all. We will be doing individual blogs about the hatching process and so much more, but here is an overview of the new arrivals.

The first, and most important addition, is the birth of our daughter Isabelle Barbara! She was born at the beginning of January (a little later than expected) and we have all been getting adjusted to our new family of seven. The big kids are thrilled and really love their new baby sister. Hopefully, now that she is getting bigger and we are adjusted we will be doing more blogs about the great happenings here on the farm. So much has happened that we need to update you all about.

Shortly after Isabelle was born, we took a long trip to pick up some baby piglets. They are adorable and are getting along very well with Petunia. I'm pretty sure that they think she is their momma, and she sure seems to like the company. When they first came to live with us, we thought we were going to have to name them Houdini1 and Houdini 2 since they somehow managed to ecsapemultir times.

We have started incubating eggs. We figured we might was well make Jack, the rooster who has earned his name, which is short for Jack@$$, earn his keep around here. We have done several groups of chicks and have only lost one baby to the hatching process. We had another few that never hatched, but that is normal. They are adorable and they have now grown big enough to move into the big house. To start, they live here in the dining room until they start to try to fly up and roost on the edge of the box. For a while, we were then moving them to the basement because it was too cold to be in the barn with the pigs, even with a heat light. Eventually, they all move out there and spend some time with their swine friends before graduating to the coop with the adults. The adult world can be difficult, but they all adjusted well to the transitions and are doing great. Recently, we had a hawk swoop down and try to steal one of the smaller birds. Jack put up a good fight and protected his ladies. He scared the hawk away and all is safe again. Hopefully he is able to keep this protective stance up, because we had a fisher cat in the compost a few weeks ago and have been warned of foxes and coyotes in the area snatching chickens, even in daylight hours.

It sure has been busy around here at Autumn Frost Farm, but we have had tons of new stuff going on. We look forward to writing about it and sharing more with all of you. Stay tuned for more great happenings here at the farm. Until then, have a great day!

Fat Tub of Lard

When our first pigs went to slaughter, we received close to 50 pounds of lard. At the time I had no idea what the hell I was going to do with that much lard. All I knew was slaughtering was expensive and I wanted to get everything back from the slaughter house that I could.

So... after doing some reading on the inter-web, I decided I would try my hand at rendering lard. Today I thawed out 10 pounds of lard.

The first step to make all this happen was to trim the fat! (My daughter loves puns :) Once the lard was nice and clean the next step was to cut into small pieces. I saw a lot of different techniques for this part. Some people were using food processors to cut it up. The biggest problem I saw with the food processor was that once the lard heated up you were going to have one hot sticky mess on your hands! I opted to cut it up by hand.

Once everything was cut up, you begin the rendering process. This can be done two ways, on the stove or in a crock pot. I tried both. The stove need more attention and more stirring so the lard didn't burn. No one wants piggy flavored lard when you're making pastries! The crock pot was a lot slower but had much more consistent results.

Once the lard started heating up, the oils began separating from the solids. These oils were ladled out of the crock pot and strained with cheesecloth then poured onto jars to cool. Once the jars began to cool the oils began to solidify and turn into the snow-white lard that we all recognize.

On the health side of things, before I started this adventure I tried to find reliable sources of information on the inter-web about the health benefits of using lard. Good luck! Here is a link to the google search I used, Google Search. You'll have to make your own decision.

Halloween Leftovers

Now that Halloween has come and gone, what to do with all the pumpkins? Everyone loves pumpkins! Even the animals! Petunia put down 3 large and the chickens picked clean 2 large ones. Let's see, that leaves only 3 left for tomorrow.

A bushel and a peck!

What a beautiful day for apple picking! We loved starting this new family tradition together. It wasn't what you'd expect, being an hot and sticky 90 degrees in the middle of fall, but it was a fantastic day! All together, we picked 3 bushels of apples (meaning 6 of the largest bags available) and ate almost as many along the way. The kids learned very quickly that the best ones are already on the ground, which was great for the little ones who had a hard time reaching the ripe ones still on the trees. It is a great experience seeing all four of our kids working together, laughing and enjoying the moment. The apples all went to good use. We now have an abundance of homemade applesauce, apple jam and apple butter canned and stacked away. It was a wonderful day filled with incredible memories. We all can't wait to do it again next year!

Grain Storage

Today was a beautiful fall day. The sun was out, the breeze was blowing and the Pats won! It was also a day for getting things built. On Wednesday, the silo that I ordered 6 weeks ago was finally delivered. Today, Amanda and I decided to tackle building the silo. It went pretty well. Luckily we work very well together. Even at 29 weeks pregnant!

Whenever I have to build something large, how come the directions are always terrible? It should be a requirement that whoever writes the directions has to try and built it too! I was surprised that it only takes 14 steps to build a silo, complete with a ladder, flip top and 60 degree shoot. But we got it built. Now to get it filled!

Yields!

We brought 3 pigs to slaughter in late September. The yields were excellent! One pig was slightly over weight, but they all look great! Total hanging weight was 459 pounds. The sausage links look delicious! Here's a link to the newest fall flyer. 2017 Fall Flyer.pdf

Distress!

We have been trying to buy this old farm house. Buying a house is not an easy task and on top of that this house a a cash only sale. Each day is a new surprise. Getting to an agreement on the P&S was no easy task. We must have sent back and forth at least 3 agreements. Finally we reach an agreement on the contingencies and we're allowed to test the septic system last Friday. Considering the condition of the house I am pretty surprised that the septic was in as good of shape as it was. Which is a good thing. The septic was a deal breaker for us. If it didn't pass we were going to bail on the house.

Today, I found out that withdrawing money out of your 401k isn't as easy as i thought it was going to be. I thought for a few hours our funding for the house might actually fall through. But, I managed to get it figured and avoided another disaster.

This house has confirmed a lot of my beliefs in life. 1. Ain't nothin' easy! 2. If you want something done right you need to do it yourself. and 3. Do Your Job. Thanks Coach Belichick.