i met todd and dale at the farmers market after reading an article on them in the flagpole.  i talked to them a little bit about their homestead and interests and became excited to pay them a visit to vesta, georgia.  todd is a carpenter and organically farms and sells his goods to the athens community.  dale works for the university as well as plays the fiddle in several local bands and enjoys writing.  she has recently been doing beautiful farm fresh flower arrangements for weddings.  it was a pleasure to get to know the two and i thank them for showing me around.

besides the veggie fueled volkswagon in the driveway…the overall landscape took me back 100 years.  inside, the house has been beautifully preserved and is filled with wonderful antique collections.  the walls, corners, and hallways are composed of of old instruments, hats, miniatures, tiny found skeletons, and doorknobs to name a few.  all are arranged in wonderful vignettes that warm each room.  many of the walls and ceilings are hand honed planks-untreated and have aged gracefully over the years.

the main street used to run through their property- which is now the driveway which takes you to the old post office and todd’s hand built studio.  his studio is filled with reclaimed building supplies:  old windows, beautiful wood, things that need not be wasted.

their home is lucky to have such caring dwellers as they are so respectful of the homestead’s history and future.  such a wonderful place!  -kristen

In addition to the post office/barn and Todd’s shop there are several other outbuildings. There’s a shed of some sort – possibly once a smokehouse, a root cellar, a bunk house for farm hands and/or possibly slaves, a buggy shed, the vestiges of a barn long ago collapsed and another two room house which may have housed travelers or workers adjoining the back porch. There’s even a pump house made with granite that was quarried nearby and has been re-commissioned as a homemade walk-in cooler for the veggies. There’s a small cemetery in the back that has three graves of the family that, presumably, built the house, or first settled there.

The house itself is a simple single story vernacular Greek Revival farmhouse. The original section is a simple hall and double parlor layout and has had two gable sections (sheds?) added sometime later, we think in the later 19th or early 20th century – enlarging the house by four more rooms and an extension of the central hall that runs the length of the house. We believe these sheds included a dog trot that was eventually enclosed and became a continuation of the center hallway. Except for a bathroom (hurray indoor plumbing) and a back porch that connects the house to the smaller bunk house, not much else has been changed. When we found the place it had not been lived in for at least 18 years. We could see where electricity was added and updated on an as-needed basis. One room had a small fuse box (with fuses) and one room had a small, inadequate circuit breaker. Another exciting detail is that we bought the house from descendants of the family who built or first settled here – it had never been owned outside of the family. There were no records of the house ever being built or sold – just the land and farm. We have no idea when the house was “born” – but materials and techniques suggest the original section was built anywhere from 1850’s – 1880’s. We’ve learned that it’s hard to determine for certain from this evidence, since older building methods continued to be used in rural areas when more modern techniques were used “in the big city.”

The first thing you notice upon entering the house is the wood. The walls floors and ceilings are all wide, hand-finished planks of heart pine. Much of the wood was left unpainted. You can see the hand plane strokes on every board. Every nail is a hand cut nail – inside and out. The central hall walls are vertical planks of unusual configuration. Every other plank was mitered on each side, front and back to a “tongue” and the other boards were left as is but “grooved” to receive the mitered planks. It makes an interesting paneling that is the same on both sides of the wall so that the two rooms on either side of the hall have the same pattern. Neither of us has ever seen anything quite like it. Some of the planks on the floors and walls are quite wide – you just don’t see wood like this every day. Since Todd is a woodworker and restorer, he was so thrilled to have fallen into this property. It couldn’t be a better place for someone with such a deep appreciation for wood. He still can be caught from time to time just rubbing those plane marks with his hand with this strange smile on his face.

We moved to Georgia from Colorado where we had an antiques business. We both had been collecting most of our adult lives; consequently our house is filled with old stuff. In fact, I met Todd at his own backyard antiques/yard sale in Missouri one week after I had moved there (from Athens back in 93) – which is so apropos as often it’s the case that the things I prize most I got at a yard sale. Our first date was a farm auction in Missouri. Things could have gotten off to a rocky start if there hadn’t been two of these incredible birds’ nests amidst the dusty treasures. We both saw this nest – a pouch really – and we both wanted it – obviously – but amazingly, another one was found (what are the odds?) and oddly enough we were the only bidders on these beauties. A really sweet magnifying glass was also procured, along with a sweet pressed wood architectural remnant. Our buying and collecting has slowed quite a bit ever since we found this place – the ultimate antique purchase – and we’ll be fixing it up for as long as we are here. We see so much potential, and we have a long way to go and so little time to devote to the many projects at hand.

Speaking of time, it nearly all goes to Veribest Farm these days. Todd is a man obsessed with his veggies. He cares so much for these plants, it’s a wonder he can bring himself to eat them. It’s not just the veggies. He puts as much care and feeding into the dirt with his home made composted mulch and pet worms – thousands of them – that he constantly feeds compost to and he ecstatically collects their castings. Black gold. Our small patch of garden at this point is just under an acre. It may not be enough to make enough money to quit our day jobs, but there’s some room to grow. We have a lot to learn and it may be too soon to expand. And anyway, I’ll never forget the words of Tim Mills of Mills Farm – “If you farm to make money, you’ll starve. If you farm as a way of life, you’ll thrive.” This is the mantra as we pick, wash, bundle, arrange and pack until midnight Friday and then get up at 4:30 in the morning to load, drive, unload, arrange and prepare our smiles for the crowd hungry for fresh, clean veggies that are produced nearby by the very people they are chatting with. It’s such an incredible exchange. These good people who come to the market get, along with their produce, something perhaps even more valuable – a connection to their food and its nourishment. One customer commented, “I haven’t seen any beans today, do you have any?” She learned that beans were scarce that day because we had been through a tremendous heat wave – nearly ten days of high 90’s, which stopped the vascular action of the bean plants cold (so to speak) – they simply shut down temporarily. So, beans that were plentiful the previous week were not available. The customer gained an experience of farming, of the growing process and the frustration – together with the realization that it’s part of living off the land. Yeah, she could go get some beans at a grocery store, but she could also get some lovely tomatoes, a melon and peppers directly from the farmer that week and hope for cooler weather, god forbid some rain, and have fresh beans next week – along with the rest of us.  -dale wechsler

the “bird nests”

a collection of old nails and doorknobs fixed to a ceiling beam

back view of their house

a side view of their house

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