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The daffodils at Laurel Ridge Farm in Litchfield at their peak in late April 2024.A visit to the farm on April 10 showed that only a few daffodils were in bloom.Peak may be in another week or two.
Photo by Robin Roraback
“And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”
Those lines, from the poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” by William Wordsworth, are inscribed on a stone marker at Laurel Ridge Farm in the Northfield section of Litchfield.
It rings true to visitors who go to see the more than ten thousand daffodils and narcissus that were planted at Laurel Ridge Farm beginning in the early1940’s. The bulbs were planted in a field considered too rocky to plant crops. The stone marker that holds the poem by Wordsworth also explains: “These daffodils were planted for all to enjoy by Virginia and Remy Morosani, 1941.”
Since then, the Morosani family has maintained the daffodils and set up a foundation for their care. More bulbs were planted over the years. Maintenance includes digging up and separating bulbs when they become over-crowded.
A visit on April 10 found that only a few daffodils were in bloom. A couple who goes yearly and had come to check predicted, “Maybe a week or two more until peak.”
The daffodils at Laurel Ridge Farm in Litchfield. Photo by Robin Roraback
From about mid-April to early May, thousands of visitors are welcomed to see the daffodils. There are three rules: No dogs, no picnicking, and no picking or stepping on the flowers. They also ask that no one park on the east side of the narrow road so that emergency vehicles gain access if needed.
It is a magical experience to walk the more than ten acres of meandering paths, with woods and ponds, surrounded on all sides by daffodils and narcissus in shades of yellow from pale, almost white to golden yellow.
The Visit Litchfield CT Facebook page (www.facebook.com/VisitLitchfieldCT) posts updates and will post when the daffodils peak. Laurel Ridge Daffodils Facebook page also posts updates on when the peak is expected.
Laurel Ridge Farm is located at 66 Wigwam Road, 1.3 miles south of the intersection withRoute 254. A sign for Laurel Ridge Farm is at the beginning of Wigwam Road. There is no admission fee. It is open from sunrise to sunset while the daffodils bloom. After that, it is closed until the next year.
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Old Crow Medicine Show will perform their high-energy brand of Americana at The Mahaiwe on April 25.
Brooke Stevens
Old Crow Medicine Show has been making merry music since 1998. While students at Ithaca College in upstate New York, the band recorded, toured, and discovered gold in a discarded musical idea.
As legend has it, co-founder Chris Fuqua gave lead singer and fiddle player Ketch Secor a bootleg of a Bob Dylan song sketch. Secor took the chorus and added verses with themes of traveling that reflected his homesickness for the south. The resulting “Wagon Wheel” became the band’s biggest hit, going gold and eventually platinum in 2013.
When asked why the song continues to resonate to this day, mandolin player and multi-instrumentalist Cory Younts said, “It’s simple, easy to learn, and pleasing to the ear. It’s everyone’s favorite campfire song. Ketch knew it was gonna be a big hit when he wrote it, and that it was gonna go for miles and miles.”
The band got a big break while busking outside of a pharmacy in Boone, North Carolina in 2000 when they were discovered by legendary blind bluegrass musician Doc Watson who invited them to perform at his annual Merlefest music festival, changing their lives forever.
As a result of their performance, the band was invited to play Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry where they were embraced and mentored by Marty Stuart, who invited them to tour and open for country music legends Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton.
In 2004, they recorded their eponymous album “O.C.M.S.” produced by David Rawlings, musical partner of Gillian Welch. Younts recalls how it was the right time for the band’s brand of music.
“Old Crow was starting to make a name for themselves in Nashville around the time of the Cohen Brothers’ film ‘Oh Brother Where Art Thou?’ I was a fan and would go to as many shows as I could. Gil and Dave would be there too. They’re wonderful people. They have Woodland Studios in Nashville.”
In December 2024, the band celebrated 25 years of the album with a performance on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series. Today, they are one of the bigger Americana acts, and on reflection, Younts believes they helped start the genre.
“I remember when everybody thought we were just making country music. I think we’re one of the first bands to start that whole sound and category (of Americana),” he said.
Old Crow Medicine Show will bring their unique brand of Americana to the Berkshires in late April. Audiences can expect an energetic and highly entertaining show.
“We’re very high energy with a lot of humor. All of us rotate instruments throughout the night; everybody plays probably six instruments. It’s entertaining, comical, good old ruckus busking music,” Younts said.
Come see for yourself at the Mahaiwe Theater in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on Friday, April 25.
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That the “shot heard ‘round the world” would be fired in the early spring of 1775 was guaranteed three months earlier by two directives from secretary of state Lord Dartmouth.
Although today we honor the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 as the commencement of the Revolutionary War, we should recognize that the timing of the war’s onset was almost inevitable, as was its location, near Boston, epicenter of American resistance since the Tea Party of December 1773.
As the readers of prior columns know, the British reaction to the Tea Party was a series of Draconian measures, in particular to punish Massachusetts and the port of Boston. These strictures, in turn, gave reason for the First Continental Congress, held in Philadelphia in August-September 1774, which instituted a broad boycott of British goods and began militia preparations in hundreds of towns. When the boycott started to hurt British shipping, King George III and Parliament decreed additional tough measures. General Thomas Gage, head of all British forces in the colonies, pleaded with London for 20,000 soldiers, but the powers that be decided that number couldn’t be spared and sent far fewer.
That the “shot heard ‘round the world” would be fired in the early spring of 1775 was guaranteed three months earlier by two directives from secretary of state Lord Dartmouth.
The first instructed all provincial governors to prevent Americans from becoming delegates to the Second Continental Congress. The second tasked Gage with arresting and imprisoning all former delegates to the First Congress and likely delegates to the Second, and to seize powder, rifles, etc., that might be used in a rebellion.
By late March, due to bureaucratic and weather delays, these directives still had not arrived in America. Yet hordes of Tory colonists had by then fled the countryside to Boston for the protection of British soldiers from their neighbors’ growing animosity. Under their impetus, British troops tarred and feathered a local farmer/patriot, parading him through town in a cart while a band played and soldiers sang, “Yankee Doodle come to town/ For to buy a firelock;/ We will tar and feather him/ and so we will John Hancock.”
The wealthiest man in Massachusetts and the head of Boston’s safety committee and the colony’s provincial congress, Hancock was busy buying medicines and ammunition enough for an army of 15,000. However, his provincial colleagues thought him a bit trigger-happy and so passed an edict that Hancock was not to summon the militias unless and until Gage and 500 men “shall march out of the Town of Boston, with Artillery and Baggage.”
Hancock and John Adams, understanding that Gage would likely try to arrest them, left early for the Second Continental Congress, and kept moving around in Massachusetts to avoid detection. Readying to leave town, Hancock ordered his safety committee to steal four mounted cannon from the British, which they did.
In early April, Gage’s spies reported Hancock and Adams hiding in Lexington, and that the patriot arsenal was hidden in Concord. On April 14, the letters from London to Gage finally arrived and he sprang into action, sending out two forces, one to Concord to destroy the armaments and another to Lexington to arrest Adams and Hancock.
But the patriots also had spies and operatives, knowledgeable ones who understood the implication of small boatloads of soldiers debarking from moored men-of-war, and columns of Redcoats marching toward a muster point on Boston Common. Among these operatives was silversmith Paul Revere.
At ten o’clock on Tuesday evening, April 18th, Dr. Joseph Warren – the leader of the safety committee in Hancock’s absence — sent for Revere and asked him to ride to Lexington to warn Hancock and Adams that Gage was coming.
Revere did. Hancock, on receiving the news, sent messages to gather militias to counter Gage’s troops. The bell of Lexington’s main church pealed all night, and its alarm, and similar ones in nearby towns, alerted militias from as far away as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, so that on the 19th of April, when the British arrived in Lexington and Concord (and Hancock and Adams hid in the fields to avoid capture) trained and armed Americans were out in force to meet them, and to take casualties, but to win the day and begin the American Revolution.
Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written many books, including three about the Revolutionary Era.
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Turning Back the Pages
Apr 16, 2025
125 years ago — April 1900
SALISBURY — The Morse-Keefer Cycle Co. have closed a portion of their works for an indefinite period.
William Conklin has moved his market to the Plummer building. W.F. Juppenlatz will enlarge his store by removing the partition between the barber shop and the room formerly occupied by Mr. Conklin.
Norfolk is to have a woman superintendent of the town farm, Mrs. Thomas Carroll who will take charge of the farm the coming year.
The old Blazing Star Lodge, No. 74, F. & A.M. of Cornwall Bridge is to be resuscitated, and the Grand Lodge officers will reinstitute it April 9th. The old lodge charter was granted in 1825, and was revoked in 1838. Since that time there has been no Masonic organization in the town.
We are pleased to note that Mrs. Lockwood’s condition is so much improved as to enable her to sit up for a few hours each day.
One of our property owners has blood in his eye. Instead of walking on the sidewalk he says people are determined to walk on his lawn, thus killing the grass. The man is kicking; he has a right to kick and kick hard. The sidewalks are made to use and should be made so that people CAN walk on them. However this man has provided a good dry walk and he thinks that ought to be sufficient.
LAKEVILLE — Capt. William Bartle is having a severe tussle with the grip.
The other night an amusing circumstance occurred at the depot. It seems one of our local Polanders expected a friend from the old country, so he went to the station to meet the last train. The train came and with it the man. Being unable to speak or understand English, he did not start to get out of the train quickly enough and it started up. The man on the platform was frantic, and in his excitement he rushed after the train, yelling “like sixty”; his legs flew; his coat tails stood out straight; his arms waved like a windmill, but the train didn’t pay the least attention and the last seen of him he was chasing around the curve and may be running yet for all we know.
100 years ago — April 1925
Robert Flint of Yale visited his grandfather, W.P. Everts, over Sunday.
SALISBURY — Benedict Carley, 11 years old, son of the late Harry Carley of this place, was drowned in the Blackberry river at East Canaan on Sunday afternoon. The boy was apparently riding his bicycle near the river and was thrown into the water when the bicycle struck some obstruction. He leaves his mother, Catherine Carley, and a brother, George, 14 years old.
State police, assisted by deputy sheriffs and constables, scoured the woods in Kent Tuesday morning seeking William Smith of Hartford, and Alfred Beebe of Great Barrington, who late Saturday afternoon again escaped from the county jail at Litchfield. The pair are supposed to have broken into the New Haven railroad’s freight-house at Cornwall Bridge during the night, where cases of eatables were broken open and a quantity of goods stolen. Smith has escaped from the Litchfield jail twice and Beebe three times, all in a short period. The two men were captured shortly before noon, while they were sleeping in the woods about a mile south of North Kent.
TACONIC — Frederick Hunt broke his collar bone last week while playing at school.
LIME ROCK — Mrs. Peck is entertaining an out of town friend this week.
Grandma Lorch returned to Lime Rock from Cornwall, where she has been for several weeks.
TACONIC — Joseph Pickert Jr. had the misfortune to cut his foot with an axe on Friday afternoon, severing the tendon of the great toe. Dr. Peterson repaired the damage with four stitches and Joseph is now about on crutches.
One of our local Boy Scouts, Rexford Baldwin, rode from Hartford Sunday on his bicycle. He left Hartford at 10 a.m. and arrived in Lakeville at 5 p.m.
Mr. H.P. Sharp, formerly of the Pine Plains Register, has assumed the ownership of the Harlem Valley Times of Amenia. He is retaining Editor J.D. O’Brien and the Times force. The Journal extends fraternal good wishes to Mr. Sharp and his able assistants.
Messrs. F.E. Bartholomew, A.E. Bauman and Chester Thurston, representing Lakeville Hose Co., were in New Jersey on Tuesday and Wednesday to witness demonstrations of different chemical trucks possible for use of the local company.
M.G. Fenn and Elester Patchen were down among the clams at New Haven last Sunday and some of the clams were down among Fenn and Patchen before the day was over.
Again there is too much speed being used by auto drivers through our Main Street. Why not give the kiddies and elderly people a little chance even if it takes about two minutes longer to pass through. Mr. State Policeman it is time to be on the job and nip this practice in the bud.
50 years ago — April 1975
Five years after its inception, the dream of Fred Gevalt III of Lakeville, to build and fly his own airplane, has come true. Mr. Gevalt piloted his single-engine seaplane, a Volmer Sportsman amphibian, on its maiden flight on March 16. To date the young pilot has more than 13 hours in flight time in his seaplane.
Lakeville and Falls Village firemen fought a stubborn brush fire late Saturday afternoon that burned over several hundred acres of forest land on the southern slope of Prospect Mountain in Salisbury before the fire was extinguished. Firemen had to bushwhack their way into the site from Sugar Hill Road in Amesville carrying 70-pound water tanks on their backs. The flames, which started in the valley, burned all the way to the ridgeline at the top of the 1461-foot mountain and destroyed mainly leaves, needles and underbrush.
Three Canaan men were arrested last Wednesday for the theft of emergency radio equipment from the Canaan Fire Department on March 16. The radio equipment was returned two days after the theft, left on the hood of Canaan Fire Chief Allyn Gatti’s auto. The men were each charged with third-degree burglary and second-degree larceny.
Ginny Lloyd of Salisbury has purchased The Polka Dot dress shop in Sheffield. Miss Lloyd, who formerly owned Pandora’s Box gift shop in Lakeville, has sold that establishment and is moving its stock to the Sheffield location. After three years of selling gifts, she wanted to expand her operations to include ladies’ apparel, but had no room for such items in her Lakeville location.
25 years ago — April 2000
Just when we thought we’d seen the last of Old Man Winter, he delivered a snow storm and anywhere from 4 to 12 inches of white fluff in the region. What on seasonably warm Saturday had been blooming daffodils were unseasonably buried blooms Sunday.
Tibetan monks from the Gaden Jangtse Monastery in Mundgod in south-central India spent a week of activities at the Salisbury School, including creating a Green Tara Sand mandala by dropping grains of colored sand to form patterns. Near the end of the week the mandala was dismantled and the monks led a procession of students, teachers and townspeople to Lake Washinee where the grains of sand were ceremoniously scattered.
SALISBURY — Rita Delgado won’t be getting breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. More likely, she’ll be eating cold danish and drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup in a charter bus headed for Washington D.C. Mrs. Delgado will be on her way to join the Million Mom March on the nation’s capital, hopefully in the company of 45 or more others from the Northwest Corner who want tighter gun control laws. “The [Second Amendment] right to bear arms didn’t mean going to school with a semiautomatic or a Saturday night special,” she said.
SHARON — As of Tuesday, West Woods #1 joined Modley, Herb, Bowne, Butter and Cole roads as a scenic town road. After weighing the comments from about a dozen and a half residents at a public hearing April 7, the Board of Selectmen voted Tuesday to designate the unpaved the 3.4-mile long portion of West Woods Road #1 as scenic.
Brian O’Hara has brought honor and recognition to Kent. The 13-year-old eighth-grader at Kent Center School came in second in the state Geography Bee April 7, at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.
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