Post by Pogue Parry on Jun 28, 2008 5:00:01 GMT -5
Greenwood Farm
[/u][/center]The design, construction, materials, and craftsmanship of this late First Period (1694) house represent the unique style of the era. Recent archaeological investigations revealed a rare survival of an eighteenth-century milk room or dairy inside the house. In the 1640s, Robert Paine Sr. received a land grant from the Town of Ipswich for the Paine Farm. There he began a 250-year-old tradition of raising cattle, harvesting salt hay, and fishing.
Greenwood Farm provides a rich feeding and breeding ground for numerous birds, finfish, shellfish, and mammals. On a typical summer day, you may see swallows, waxwings, and dragonflies swooping over the fields for small insects, or a red-tailed hawk riding high on a thermal. Great blue herons and snowy and American egrets wade through the marsh. Occasionally at dawn or dusk, the air quivers with the soft hooting of a great horned owl or the raspy bark of a red fox. Bobolinks nest in the fields.
The Reservation takes its name from Thomas S. Greenwood, a member of the Paine family, who built the 19th-century white farmhouse. From 1916, Greenwood Farm was a summer retreat for Robert G. Dodge, whose family lived in the farmhouse and transformed the Paine House into a Colonial Revival guest house with late 17th- to mid-19th-century American furniture and decorative arts.
Trails
2.5 miles of trails. Easy walking.
