Historical group honors old farm

FEURA BUSH — At a time when the town of New Scotland is at a crossroads, leaving behind its rural past as a farming community and considering the embrace of large commercial developments, a local group is recognizing the centuries-long presence of the Slingerland LaGrange farm with an historical marker.

“This place should be revered and this place should be looked at,” said Andrea Gleason, a member of the New Scotland Historical Association, which selected the farm for the marker.

“This farm happens to bring together two of the [area’s] longest-residing families,” Douglas LaGrange said. LaGrange, who serves on the town board, works the dairy farm with his brother David; his father, Marvin; his uncle Ronald; and one hired helper.

The New Scotland Historical Association will dedicate the historical marker this Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Slingerland LaGrange house. The farm is at 52-54 LaGrange Lane in Feura Bush, and the dedication ceremony is open to the public.

In a history that LaGrange wrote for the association’s newsletter, he noted the marriage of Agnes Slingerland to Vanderzee LaGrange. Both families had arrived in New York from Holland, and both have long histories in New Scotland and Guilderland. Agnes and Vanderzee married in the late 18^th Century, and, because Agnes had no brothers, the couple moved to the Slingerland farm in Feura Bush, LaGrange wrote.

The marker at the farm will be a reminder of “the agriculture that used to be here,” said Gleason. “It has been in constant use and ownership by the family that it deserves the recognition, probably sooner than now.”

“We want to mark the things that are there now…the old, old, old things,” said Marion Parmenter, the chairwoman of the historical association’s museum collections committee. She said that the association does not want to wait to recognize historically-significant places so that future residents must “read a road sign and try to remember what it looked like. This is one of these centennial farms. It’s been in the same family for more than 100 years.”

All in the family

The stone farmhouse was built around 1750. Today, Ronald LaGrange lives in part of it. More than 80 years ago, Douglas LaGrange said, the home was partitioned for Ronald and his father to share. Now, the farm’s full-time hired hand lives in the second part of the house.

Douglas LaGrange said that the farm currently milks 240 cows, and has more than 200 young stock.

“We raise the feed for the cows,” he said. The farm grows corn rations for energy, and alfalfa and grass hay for protein, he said. He and his family chop and place the hay in silage. They do not sell hay or corn to other farmers.

“We need all we have,” he said. “It’s dependent on the weather, too. Once in a while, if we’re short on corn silage, we purchase from somebody else. We buy grain weekly to supplement the silage.”

He said that many people are unaware that “so many services and jobs are directly affected by farms. This has always been a town, and actually, New York State, itself, where agriculture is still number one or number two in [industry]. Even farmers are in better shape than some Wall Street people right now.”

LaGrange said that farms add to the community both economically and aesthetically. As development grows, farms struggle to stay in business, he said.

“Development prices are too large to ignore,” LaGrange said about offers developers make for open agricultural land.

Farms are “assets that folks in the country should really place a high value on,” he said.

The marker

The association chooses one town site each year to be recognized with a marker.

“We put it right into our budget,” Parmenter said. This year, the cost of the marker was $1,800, of which the town pays nearly half. When markers used to cost $400, the association used to place two per year, Parmenter said.

Maintaining the markers is also one of the historical association’s goals.

“That’s our endeavor. They’re very heavy. I have painted a marker. It’s not easy,” Parmenter said.

The signs used to be cast iron. Now, cast aluminum is used. Parmenter said that the aluminum is “harder to keep the paint on” than iron.

“We’ve said we’ll do it, so we’ll see,” she said.

The marker was shipped from the Catskill Casting Company last week, according to the town building department.

“It’s a nice recognition,” LaGrange said. “It’s certainly a bit of an honor.”