We started as weekenders. Then we traded the outer suburbs for a country life about two hours from the city. Being here reshaped how we cook, work, and rest. What began as a vegetable garden grew into laying hens, meat chickens, geese, and pigs. A small tractor arrived, and soon after we put a name on what we were building: Made In Ghent.
It was time.
Late in 2012, after a year-long search across Columbia County, New York, we found seventy-five acres less than a mile from where we were already living. The best chances often sit close at hand. That winter arrived milder than the forecasts suggested, which was fine with us. We had fences to plan, equipment to line up, and a long list before the first real spring on the land.
On paper we bought pasture. On the ground it was something else entirely. Five fields carried anywhere from five to twenty years of regrowth, from stubborn weeds to young forest. From the highest rise, above the saplings, we could still see west across the county to the Hudson River and the snow-capped spine of the Catskills. At the edge of field and timber stood a defining oak. Once we started walking the lines of the property we kept finding details worth keeping: apple trees in the hedgerows, old fieldstone walls, a vernal pool in the woods, a winding stream, field ponds, patches of ramps, and shagbark hickories dropping nuts the pigs still seek out.
In the farmyard, metal roofing buckled by years of storms lifted in the wind. Weathered siding answered with slow creaks. One barn had already collapsed. Another, with a round wooden silo we loved, was close behind. Its frame, once we could see it clearly months later, still looked strong enough for another century on a gentler site.
The farmhouse had been empty too long. Its plain, early-century face sat at a quiet angle to the road. On clear winter evenings the white clapboard and barn-red doors caught the last light like a postcard.
By the time we owned the place, the neglect ran too deep to patch safely. Letting the structures go was painful because of the stories they held. That loss also sharpened our focus: we would rebuild with care, salvage what we could, and carry the good ideas forward instead of pretending the rot was minor.
Sometimes you step back so you can move ahead with a clear head. After the buildings came down we stopped seeing only what had failed. We saw room for pasture again, better drainage, safer access for animals and people, and a farm layout that matches how we actually work today.
The same land, a working rhythm
Years past that first winter, the fields are back in rotation, the kitchen and store have their own seasons, and guests still remark on the view from the high ground. We keep learning what this soil prefers, which hedgerows hold the most fruit, and how many projects belong in a single year without wearing out the crew or the ground. The oak at the field edge is still a marker when we move fence or move animals. The stream still cuts the same gentle line through the bottom land.
If you are new to the site, the short version is simple: Little Ghent Farm is where we raise animals under Animal Welfare Approved standards, bake and preserve in our kitchen, welcome neighbors at the farm store, host workshops, and offer a farm stay when the calendar allows. This page is the longer version, the one we tell when someone asks how a weekend habit turned into a full-time farm on Snyder Road in Ghent.
