Here is some more great history from Woodland Valley historian, Rolf Reiss. Personally, I love this stuff!! It is so cool to learn more about the folks who came before us into the valley.
- Carol Seitz
I promised in my last post that I would share some more from the June 21, 1902 Harpers Weekly article entitled "Dwellers Among the Catskills". In the last installment the author had visited at a farmhouse with a woman named Jane in Snyder Hollow which would later become known as Woodland Valley. He left her waiting for her son who was returning that day from Massachusetts.
"I went presently, and continued as far as Larkin's, the last house at the extreme end of the Valley". ( Larkin's farm included the present day Holz farm as well as the Savage property. The property was at one time owned by John and Lorrie Lurie who operated it as a guest house that boasted both cross country ski trails and a downhill ski slope with a rope tow. Larkin's was also a favorite haunt of the naturalist John Burroughs who camped at the farm at least twice before 1894 while laying siege to Slide Mountain. He writes of his adventures with Larkin's wandering cows in his book Riverby.The first photo enclosed shows Mrs. Larkin and her son in front of the homestead shortly after 1880 and the second was taken from along Woodland Valley Road (near the present day Holz pond ) around 1900.The later photo includes a porch addition an second story eyebrow windows). "
" The Farmer ( Larkin), a grizzled elderly man and his son were threshing buckwheat on the barn floor. They dealt with about a dozen of the brown bundles at a time, standing them on end in regular order, three or four feet apart, and giving the tops of each in turn a few judicious raps which the flails that set the dark kernels flying in all directions. As soon as a bundle that the threshers were belaboring toppled over,the blows became more energetic, and it was well cudgeled from end to end. To do the job thoroughly the bundles were turned and rethreshed once or twice and then the straw was pitched out into the barn-yard to rot for fertilizer. Every Catskill farmer has his buckwheat fields, and these he plants shall yield enough to make sure of a years supply of the buckwheat cakes and some additional grain for spring cattle-
feed."
This shows again how incredibly labor intensive life was in those days. There certainly was no going to Sweet Sues for your buckweheat cakes 106 years ago! Also not much for sanitation back then (Lord knows what else one might pick up off of the barn floor along with the buckwheat!)
I will share more of this great snapshot of life in Woodland Valley soon.
- Rolf Reiss
