Hotchkiss School buys more Blum farm land

LAKEVILLE —The Hotchkiss School has agreed to purchase from the family of Jack and Jeanne Blum approximately 17 acres, located on the east side of Route 41 in Salisbury, and the three buildings on this land.

The acres are contiguous to Fairfield Farms land acquired by the school in 2004 and since farmed, producing vegetables and fruit for the Hotchkiss dining hall. Students and members of the faculty and staff give their time to this farming initiative, with the oversight of professional managers.

Hotchkiss acquired 260 acres of Fairfield Farms in 2004 from Jeanne and Jack Blum, a graduate and former trustee of the school.

Jack Blum is a former commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture. Jeanne was a trustee of Sharon Hospital for 16 years. The 260 acres have development restrictions based on requirements of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture’s Development Rights agreement. Elyse Harney acted as the broker in the recent transaction. She is also representing the main house and farm, which are for sale.

“Hotchkiss is committed to modeling environmental stewardship in many ways,� said Hotchkiss Head of School Malcolm McKenzie. “Fairfield Farms is a magnificent laboratory for this. We are now able to develop significantly the program we have started during the past few years.

“In the future, the farm will provide opportunities for more substantial food production for our dining hall as well as for numerous other activities connected with the local agricultural projects. Hotchkiss is committed to maintaining and developing partnerships with our surrounding community in this and many other ways.�

Coincidentally, a farm on this site belonged for many years to the family of the school’s founder, Maria Harrison Bissell Hotchkiss (1827-1901). The Bissell family owned and farmed Tory Hill, which was part of an earlier 7000-acre pre-Revolutionary land grant from King George III to Captain James Landon, the Tory to whom the name of the hill refers.

Landon conveyed about 170 acres on Tory Hill to the Bissells (reportedly to avoid its possible confiscation in the Revolution.) It appears from archival records that Maria Bissell Hotchkiss was born in a house on Tory Hill Farm and frequently stayed at the farm during the years when her brother, Charles, operated it.

The large white main house was built in 1905 by Albert B. Landon, who had married Maria’s aunt, Carrie Bissell, in 1889, thus uniting the two families who once owned what became Fairfield Farms in 1977 when the Blums bought it from the five daughters of Augustus Blagden.

The Blums changed the farm name to conform to the registered Black Angus operation they had started in Virginia and continued a similar program here for the next 27 years.