GUILDERLAND — A way of life is coming to an end for some members of the Vojnar family.

“We all got along at one time in our family,” said Daniel Vojnar of the nine Vojnar siblings.

But, he said, after his mother and later his father died, the family fractured.

His sister, Doris, likened their life growing up on the farm to the 1970s television show, “The Waltons,” which depicted a Depression-era farm family in Appalachia.

Daniel Vojnar still lives on the farm in a house he has improved from the trailer it once was. He has a barn and a horse named Rainman. He once envisioned running a horse farm on the property.

He is slated to be evicted on March 31. He said the person hired to do the demolition came to inspect the property.

His horse, a gelded Thoroughbred, is 29 and has lived on the farm for 22 years, Vojnar said.

“This is all he knows,” Daniel Vojnar said of Rainman. “So it isn’t only us to be taken away from what we know. The horse will also need some psychology because he’s going to go through a trauma as well.”

The Vojnar farm is one of four parcels that together are to be developed by Carver Companies into a neighborhood with 66 homes.

The plans were first presented at a Guilderland Development Planning Committee meeting in September 2022. The other three parcels are owned by Kenneth Barth, vice president at Carver.

William S. Vojnar died on Nov. 1, 2015 at the age of 93.

He had grown up on the family farm in Rotterdam and, before serving in the Army during World War II, from 1942 to 1944, he arranged to buy 33 acres in then-rural western Guilderland on Posson Road.

The farm was originally stocked with pigs from his parents’ farm.

“When he came back from the service, he started building up the farm,” Doris Vojnar said in a recent Enterprise podcast with herself and her brother, Daniel, in his home on the farm.

They described life on the farm and in the slaughterhouse their father ran.

“Mondays was pig day … Saturday was chicken day,” Dan Vojnar said, describing how different days were set aside for different animals.

In addition to local farmers bringing their animals to the slaughterhouse, hunters brought their deer in the fall. The animals’ eyes were sent to Albany Medical Center, the Vojnars said, for scientific experimentation.

Doris Vojnar recalled, “You had to get out there and scrape down the blocks and clean it up before you went to school.” That was followed by the walk down Posson Road to Western Avenue to catch the school bus.

“There was many tragedies down there,” Doris Vojnar said of the slaughterhouse. Her brother, Randy, lost his arm in the meat grinder when he was 7 years old, she said. Her father lost his leg.

“We almost lost my father four or five different times,” she said.

The family never went on vacation, the Vojnars said. But Doris said she and her sister would sneak a peek at “American Bandstand” when they were supposed to be cleaning the house, and their father would take the children to see movies at the drive-in on Carman Road.

“He never saw the whole movie,” Doris Vojnar said. “He fell asleep.”

Suburbia grew up around the farm. After Windmill Estates was built, the nearby new residents complained to the town hall about stray farm animals, piles of junk, and bad smells.

The town attempted to get Vojnar to clean up the property, threatening him with a $97,000 cleaning bill. Following Enterprise coverage, volunteers stepped up to take care of the place.

“The people that came from everywhere to help clean up things and pass inspections, they’re not forgotten,” Daniel Vojnar said this month.

Later, he returned to that sentiment, saying, “The folks that had come here when we needed help wanted this farm to be here.”

Soon after, though, Vojnar was issued citations for allowing his livestock to get loose and damage neighbors’ properties.

In Guilderland Town Court, Vojnar acted as his own attorney and the judge found in his favor.

Before he died, Vojnar received approval for a cemetery at 6458 Posson Road. The Enterprise reported at the time that, upon his death, his property was “never to be sold or developed,” according to Doris Vojnar.

Doris Vojnar now maintains the cemetery, filling it with mementos and an array of solar lights. An American flag waves over the gravestones.

William Vojnar’s original will, from October 2205, set up a trust with two of the nine siblings, Shawn Vojnar and Doris Vojnar, as co-trustees. The trust was to “operate a farming facility to maintain its agricultural designation.”

“My dad said never would I ever have to leave this home, and to continue with what I was doing. He would not subdivide the property,” Daniel Vojnar said this month.

Shawn Vojnar petitioned in Surrogate’s Court, to have Doris Vojnar removed as fiduciary. Doris said she did not fight the removal on the advice of her lawyer at the time.

“The only party authorized to act or speak on behalf of the Vojnar Estate is the Estate’s executor, Sean [sic] Vojnar, through the Estate’s attorneys,” Josef Malik wrote in answer to Enterprise questions.

Malik is the chief legal officer at Carver Companies and said he is serving as buyer’s counsel in connection with the Vojnar property.

Malik went on, “Carver has been working closely and collaboratively with the Vojnar Estate and its counsel throughout this process …. We have been careful to coordinate with counsel to ensure that no work interferes with the rights of any occupants while the eviction process proceeds.”

Malik said further that “certain individuals” on the property are tenants, not owners.

“The Vojnar Family Trust is in the process of evicting those tenants through counsel, and that process is ongoing. We have worked hand-in-hand with the Trust’s eviction attorney to ensure that the tenants’ legal rights are respected as that process plays out.

“Importantly, the Surrogate’s Court has confirmed that the Estate is not prevented from proceeding with a sale of the property. As a result, the tenants do not have a legal basis to object to or block the transaction, notwithstanding the broader disputes that are occurring.”

Asked what his plans are with about a month to his eviction date, Daniel Vojnar said, “My plans are to be homeless.”

At almost 70, he said he doesn’t have any retirement savings since he put all of his resources and efforts into fixing his house.

“I have nowhere to go,” he said. “I’m not financially set to go elsewhere. I’m handicapped. I’m 69 years old with Medicaid. I have nowhere to go.”