|
|
They say they are retiring from their life-long habits of self-sufficient farming. But before they move into their new Triangle Hill Farm at Partridge Hollow on Nedobity Road, they're having a barn built for the barn animals. And there is already a driveway-framed flower-and-herb garden surrounded by a circle of hedge in front of the manor house waiting to be replanted in the spring.
They're building the barn for the three "retired" cows the Ghilardis are taking with them as pets and the pot-bellied pig, the chickens, the geese and the family of barn cats. They're taking their own three dogs, the German Shepherd, Baron, the almost-pure German Shepherd, Kali, and the plump Golden Retriever, Roamer. And they're taking the house cats, Butterscotch and Little Bit, Sara and the other "city cats," and the cockatiel in its cage. They're taking the Myers' two dogs, the German Shepherd, Dakota, and the blond Cocker Spaniel, Skoo-B-Doo, and the Myers' cats, the four grays, Furry, Girlie, Stripes and Bites, and the black beauty, Mystery. Sophie Tucker, the parrot who had lived with them a long time, died recently of pneumonia.
When asked about any farm chore she still does daily at the Killingworth farm, Ghilardi, who is not in the best of health, said with a casual wave of her hand, "Oh, I'll have time for that." But a few weeks ago Jackie tilled when she should not have and raked leaves when she should not have and she "paid the price," she said while she cooked a mammoth Thanksgiving dinner for her family and some friends.
Ray Ghilardi is a retired service technician for the Southern Connecticut Gas Company. Jackie is a retired nursery school teacher. Ray was born in New Haven in 1936, Jackie was born in Durham in 1940.
They met on a blind date. "I thought she was great," Ray said the other day in the log cabin they built on the Schnoor Road land. She liked him too, Jackie said. They married four years later on Oct. 11, 1958. "Oct. 11 is the same day Hillary and Bill Clinton got married," Jackie remembered, "only years later."
Their only child, Deborah, was born on Feb. 23, 1960. "The same day as George Washington's birthday," Debbie said, "only I'm years later."
The Ghilardis started their do-it-themselves farming in their first home in North Guilford. Jackie said she read a book called "Back to Basics" and decided that farming was the best lifestyle for a hardworking Christian family. On their first farm, she raised pigs and kept dairy goats and chickens.
"I'd always canned and I knew how to cook on a wood stove and we'd always lived in the country," she said. Jackie was the initiator of the self-sufficient, raise-your-own, organic farming lifestyle for her family, she said. Her husband worked days for the gas company, so "I did the gardening, I mowed the lawn. He didn't mind." These days Ray does much of the heavy work, but back then it was Jackie who did the farming and the housework and the cooking. She liked the life.
The Ghilardis found Killingworth because they needed more land for their expanding farm. "Ray was looking for a boat and we saw an ad for the land, "rolling meadows the ad called it," Jackie said, "but there was no rolling meadows. It was all woods and no road and the owner wouldn't even walk the land with us." Ray sacrificed the boat and they bought the land. "It was what we were looking for," he said.
They hired a bulldozer to carve out a driveway, then ordered a "put-it-together-yourself" log cabin, made of local pine but shaped, weather-treated and numbered, "like Lego," Ray said, in Massachusetts. The cabin is now the first of two houses at the top of the hill at 170-172 Schnoor Road. (The other house is Debbie and Garnett Myers' house, bought and built after they married.)
Ray and Jackie Ghilardi moved into their roomy log cabin with their daughter, Debbie, on Christmas Eve, 1977. The town of Killingworth had a population of approximately 3,000 then. On Christmas Day Jackie cooked on a large iron, wood-burning stove built in 1919 that is still in the great room of the log cabin and will move with them to Partridge Hollow. (The kitchen at Partridge Hollow, though, boasts its own stoves, cooking and baking areas, and a butler's pantry.)
In February of 1978, there was a blizzard, Jackie recalled. The Ghilardi family was snowbound for a week. But since they heated and cooked with wood and had to haul the feed for the animals all the way up Triangle Hill by hand, even without electricity they survived that winter and all others after it very well.
Time passed. Jackie planted alfalfa and corn and vegetables and milked the cows and the goats and sold the chicken eggs. Debbie went to school and helped her mother with the farm work. Ray worked days and helped farm on weekends. Jackie taught her daughter how to cook and how to can, and Debbie played the violin and studied singing and acting. Jackie encouraged wild birds to feed outside a big glass window - "There used to be whippoorwills, but they're all gone now" -- and she gave enough seed for the squirrels to survive a Connecticut winter too. At the new homestead in Higganum, Jackie has already set up feeders for the birds on the back lawn. Inside the manse from the long solarium, all two-story-high glass windows, Jackie can sit in an armchair and watch the birds feed all day, if she wants. "That's the first thing I did at the new house," she said, "put out the feeders. I've got to have my birds."
Debbie and Garnett Myers married on Halloween 1992. Garnett, a New Haven native born in 1954, met Debbie at a dinner theater where they were both performing. They married at the Schnoor farm, "with everybody in costume," Garnett said. Jackie had a virus but she cooked all the food for the 143 in attendance that day. "It was a wonderful day and eleven years later people still remember it," Debbie said. They bought a modular house to go next to the log cabin and they had to pay to install their own utility poles and create a septic system. "We started off with a huge $26,000 debt," Debbie said, "and then Jenni was a honeymoon baby." So Debbie worked as long as she could and as soon as she could after Jenni was born.
Jenni Marie Myers was born Aug. 5, 1993, after 23 hours of labor. Emma Louise was born on Aug. 20, 1997. Emma was "a difficult birth," Debbie said, "I was sick from day one, it was a difficult delivery, she was an emergency Caesarian section." There would be no more children for them. But both Garnett and Debbie were grateful for the "two beautiful healthy daughters we have."
Little Emma was more "clingy" than Jenni had been. Emma would cry when Debbie left in the mornings for work. Jackie took care of the grandchildren as well as most of the farm work. But Debbie realized that she had missed many of Jenni's first moments and that "first times" don't come again. One day the two families decided that Debbie could stay home with her babies if the balance of the mortgage they still owed was paid off. So Jackie and Ray dug into their savings and paid off their daughter and son-in-law's mortgage and Debbie became a very busy stay-at-home mom. Garnett works for a paper company. And after a while, Ray retired. But all the while, Jackie Ghilardi kept working at farming until her health began to suffer last year.
It was time to ease up, if not stop.
Developers are interested in the approximate 65-acre land parcel on Schnoor Road. The Ghilardis would like another pioneering family to buy it. On Christmas Eve 2003 they hope to be at home in Partridge Hollow. But they will remain parishioners at their beloved Emmanuel Episcopal Church. And they will keep their friends in town and make new ones where they're going.
The two Myers' girls have a whole floor to call their own in the new house. They will each have a bedroom and there are large, walk-in (big enough to play in) closets. There are secret rooms hidden behind panels. And they will have a large room for their computers and their schoolbooks and to study in. They, too, will keep their Killingworth friends while they make new Haddam ones. And by the time the girls are in the new Regional School District-17 middle school, they'll know all the children their age.
"Things will be different, but we'll still be pioneers," Jackie said. "We'll still farm. We've learned from our 26 years of doing it and from our mistakes. It's something inside me I'll never give up. And organic is the way to go. No pesticides or poisons. Only this time, the feed bin is going right next to the silo and inside the barn."
Garnett Myers said they never farmed to make money. They farmed to be healthy and to do things right.
Ray Ghilardi said that the way of the small farmer is over with; gone. "I think it's a loss for all of us, all of America. Once a farmer gives up his land, it's lost forever. Nothing can be returned. Out west, foreign people are buying the land. The young people (of America) aren't interested."
Debbie Myers said, "It's a good way of life, but it's passing. Today the values are different."
Jenni Marie said, "I'm excited. Now we get a bigger house and it's nice and private and I like that."
Little Emma Louise said that moving Triangle Hill Farm to Partridge Hollow off Endobity Road in Higganum was good in her opinion, too. "I feel good because it's a bigger house and I get my own room with a balcony," she said, hugging her dad.
Bob Dylan said it. The times, they are a-changin'.
