Hi, this is Halsey Corwin. In 1916 when I was seven, my mother died after a long illness. My older brother and I came to live with our grandparents, Halsey and Emilie Hallock.

How I loved following Grandpa around in the fields. Grandpa was a good farmer. He followed the latest sustainable practices. He grew corn, wheat and potatoes. He also had lots of sheep and cattle. One of the things that always amazed me was the amount of time he spent keeping his fields fertile. Every year they carted hundreds of cart loads of barnyard manure out to their fields. They even used the deposits in their outhouse as fertilizer. They used ashes from their stoves to provide potash. They bought more ashes from New York City to use as fertilizer and fish scraps left over from the local menhaden processing industry.

They also followed a careful pattern of crop rotation to help maintain soil fertility. One year he might plant corn, the next potatoes, and then wheat. Then for the next three or four years he let that field rest with hay or grass growing. In essence, they were using what a century later were considered “green” and “organic” practices.

Now, on behalf of Grandpa, Aunt Ella, Aunt Bessie and Uncle Hal, I want to thank you for following us around. Hope you learned a little something about the way we lived. Enjoy the rest of your day on the farm.

Hope you enjoyed meeting the Hallocks and some of the people who lived and worked on this farm over the years. This is Richard Wines again. I want to thank you for visiting Hallockville and exploring our Sustainability Trail.

I also want to thank all those who made this project possible: Jenifer Maxson played the role of Ella, Mary Kalich was her sister Bessie, Nate Kalich was their brother Hal and Jim Evans played their father Halsey. Evans is the author of “Nawth Fawk Tawk”, the definitive work on the old way of talking around here and he happens to also be a great-great-nephew of Halsey Hallock. Jan McGoey played the role of Arminda, Helene Munson was the Bohemian immigrant Josephina Hübel, Stanley Kuzmech was the Polish immigrant Alex Romanowski, Terry Brockbank was the orphan Tommy Pope and Mickey Kalich was Halsey Corwin.

I also want to thank Mary Anne Huntington for her marvelous photography. I want to thank Roberta Shoten, Herb Strobel, Suzanne Johnson and my wife Nancy Gilbert for all of their help and inspiration – as well as the Hallockville gardeners and other Hallockville staff and volunteers who have contributed to this project.

Frameless Technologies has done the technical production and aerial photography for this tour.

And finally, Hallockville wishes to thank the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation for the generous grant that made the Hallock Farm Sustainability Trail possible.