I am a musician and a professor of music, and have lived on this property all my life. My great grandfather bought this 90-acre farm in 1896.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, these acres were used as a town commons—grazing, haying and cranberry bogs—community farms for the colonial villagers of Barnstable, founded in 1639.
A U.S. Navy admiral, my great grandfather ran it as a farm with cows, pigs and chickens, near the sea. But there has always been a trace of the ancient Wampanoag presence in the fields and thickets. My family's mission is to keep the land as it was. Timeless.
We abound with wildlife—deer, coyote, rabbits, groundhogs, possum, otter, squirrels, chipmunks, field mice, herons, crows, robins, doves, swallows, sparrows, cardinals, and more. Growing all around us are the native red grass, black locust trees, Eastern red cedar, colonial privet, wild rose, bittersweet, wild blackberries, thimbleberries, grape, persimmon, holly and ivies—to name but a few.