Scenes of Vermont Forums

I'd like to get a look at the Maple Grove Farm located in E. Barnard. If you know the street or road name it's located please post it here.

Hi Mark: I've been google searching for 1 1/2 hours for you. Here is what I found. You can contact the artist. It appears that it is in North Pomfret with the hills in the background of East Barnard.

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/suns ... rgers.html

Image is a digital painting of sunset at Maple Grove Farm in North Pomfret. The background hills are in East Barnard, Vermont.

Perhaps now, someone can clarify the road but I'll keep searching. Is this image the one you are searching for? Best of luck!

contact her here:

http://fineartamerica.com/sendemail.htm ... tid=215161

Thanks for taking the time to search for me ctyanky.
I ended up sending her an email.
If you get the chance to view her "favorites" on her site, you'll be very impressed by them. ( I recognize all the Vermont themed ones )
I came across a Maple View Rd in N Pomfret which is off Pomfret Road on MapQuest. I'll be in that area sometime this weekend, I'm sure to come across it or I can ask a local resident.
If I find the road name or if someone else does it will be posted here.

Well, of course, those are 2 different places some distance apart. We learned here recently that "real" photographers aren't allowed to do that

I think this farm is an Arnold Kaplan "photo-scenic." It is certainly a farm he photographed. If someone has his book perhaps it identifies the location.

This morning I decided to drive some roads in Pomfret in an effort to find the Maple Grove Farm, assuming that it still existed. I had my doubts, since I have been on most of these roads ever the years, but I had never seen it (nor was I looking for it, because I did not know it was around here). Eventually I came to East Barnard, which is just west of the Barnard/Pomfret line, near the northwest corner of Pomfret. Just south of the solitary church in East Barnard is a dirt road. I do not recall seeing a sign, but from my atlas I took it to be Allen Hill Road, which later I discovered to be correct. This road starts heading east and quickly turns to the north, uphill, and into the woods. It quickly becomes heavily wooded, and there are no views. But, after a short distance, it suddenly opens up, and to the north (the left hand side of the road as I was heading) I found this scene, exactly as Arnold Kaplan had pictured it, except for the addition of some telephone wires, and some pretty ugly metal fencing in the barnyard. And, when I got there, it was snowing.

Some one was working there, gathering brush. He told me that only this fall the owner of the farm had decided to clear from the roadside a lot of tall brush and a very large old maple tree that had obscured the view from the road, which may explain why I have not seen the barn before (it is equally possible that I simply have never gone up this road, since it does not look promising from its starting point in East Barnard).

I have had a number of conversations with farmers in Pomfret about their barns, and about all of the old barns in the area. They have told me that most of the picturesque old farm buildings here were erected during the period from about 1870 to 1900, and that, not surprisingly, many are now in poor repair. Sinking corner posts, crumbling stone foundations, and failing roofs are common. And, the restoration of these buildings is quite expensive--I have heard several stories of expenditures in the one hundred thousand dollar range just to save an old barn. This explains, I suppose, why the old barn on Mack's Mountain Road, in Peacham, vanished this year. And, in fifteen or twenty years it may explain why none of the great old barns in the Pomfret and Woodstock hills still exist.

An American itinerant self-taught Quaker sign and stage coach painter, Edward Hicks, eked by a living by making "portraits" of farms in the Bucks County, Pennsylvania area in the 1830s and 1840s. His charming folk paintings of farms, often complete with proud farmer and his family and prize livestock in the scene, are a wonderful record of rural farm life in eastern Pennsylvania at the time. How fine it would be to have a new Hicks here, while these buildings still stand.

So glad you found it!!! I was wishing I had more time the day we were there to hunt it down. So happy to see this photo!

MINN: So glad this find came to fruition! What a delightful story to read on this farm. You have provided such great updates and photos for this forum. I think you nailed this season in its totality. Good for you! I hope you have a safe trip back to MN and thanks for all you do here!

By following this forum over the years I have added many beautiful spots to my personal list of Vermont "shrines"--there is a religious character, certainly in an Emersonian sense, to everyone's annual autumn progress across the state--and I have had the pleasure of seeing the eye-popping work of some great photographers (but also the considerable frustration of wondering why I cannot replicate it!).

A few reports, or a stray discovery, are barely adequate thanks to all.

So after all this discussion and a wonderful find/story by MINN, did Mark ever make it here????

No, I never found it. I came across other roads that provided nice photo scenes though.

Mark: I truly hope you find the barn this weekend! It's meant to be. Good luck!

ctyanky wrote:Mark: I truly hope you find the barn this weekend! It's meant to be. Good luck!

Nope, I never made it up that far North on Saturday. I needed to head South to make it in time for the Friesian display in Townshend. I'll try again next time. The saga continues......

Mark: I think it is kind of comical that your search goes on for the Maple Grove Farm! It's ok to keep the bucket list going. I finally got to Billings Farm and the VINS Raptor Center in Woodstock/Quechee after MANY years of trying to schedule it in. It's now checked off my list of things I want to do in Vermont! Since it was cloudy in Woodstock on my first weekend in VT, I didn't get to hike Mt. Tom to the summit so that is back on the list.

It is fun to build up the list, check things off and add new ones so your sense of adventure is always calling you! There should always be a "to do list" in Vermont. It keeps you coming back year after year!

Some of the things I have yet to do are the islands, North Hero, etc., one last lift ride out of 8 (Stratton) in the state of Vermont (I finally got to ride the Killington Gondola after 3 years of no gos!), the far NW corner of VT, dog sledding (yes they have it in fall but on wheels), climbing all the fire towers (I only have done one out of MANY!), The Spirit of the Ethan Allen cruise on Lake Champlain, the list goes on.

So make the Maple Grove Farm at the top of your list for next year or it will be the perpetual phantom!