Our first weekend

Yesterday it rained so hard that we couldn't really do anything at the house. Today more than made up for it. The weather was spectacular. Tommy Lee, Laurie, Spencer and Hailey were our first guests and we sat on the lawn and carved pumpkins for halloween. We opened all the windows and doors and let some air into the place. The musty old house smell started to wear off (or we are just getting used to it now)>. We opened up the basement too and found some wonderful blue stone steps, a blue stone patio and a cool old door into the basement.

We machete'd our way around the whole perimeter of the property. It took us about 4 hours but the view of the Wallkill river was worth it. It was calm, quite and beautiful. I can't wait until we have a little boat dock there.

To the right side of the pond is a huge weeping willow tree that must be hundreds off years old. Daniel and I were wondering if we could to build a stone bridge in front of this with culvert s for the water flow beneth. This will allow us to make a driveway down to the river. I can imagine sitting on the stone wall, under the willow looking up the pond to the house.

A great sense of achievement that there is now a path around the perimeter of the property so our visitors will be able to get a sense of the whole place.

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Paradox farm

If you wander along Springtown Road, past DeJoux House, you will see our mailbox opposite the front door. It's not especially distinguishable except it is rather large and sits on an old tree stump. It's a rusty old thing but it seems to have survived the snow plows and drunk drivers of Springtown Road. It has always bothered me that on the side of the mail box you can see the vague outline of the words "Paradox Farm" which was clearly a name that DeJoux House was more recently referred to. Occasionally when wondering the fields I would stumble across some incongruity and wonder if that was indeed the "paradox" that the farm was named after. Yesterday morning, for some unknown reason, I decided it was time to resolve the paradox. I sent a quick email to the previous owner June Finer to see if she knew anything of the Paradox Farm ghost on the side of the mailbox. This was her reply: once upon a time we, (myself and russell gilmore---my ex), met a

Inspiration for the future look

Daniel has found some wonderful reference materials for keeping the history and character yet not making it a museum. I love the big kitchen table plan for the kitchen inspired by Lutyens and some "behind the scenes" pictures of victorian kitchens. He also showed me some country houses from Axel Vervoordt that I really love. http://bit.ly/uX1eW Simple, authentic yet modern. We discussed putting a full length plate glass window in the old hay loft window on the end of the house. Wow. I can't wait.

Maria Deyo - a chilling tale

We arrived at the house this weekend to meet with the contractors who had poured concrete in the basement on Friday. When we arrived we found a family standing in front of the house taking pictures. Being the friendly types we are, we went over to chat. They told us they were on a haunted house tour and were looking at the house because their daughter had been talking about the ghost at our house for the last couple of days. She had bought a book called "Spooky Hudson Valley" and in it was the story of Maria Deyo and a tragic tale of a mother killing all three children and then killing herself. The family were wonderful and excited to be shown the house. They showed us the book and at the beginning of the story was a picture of our house. The book went on to say that Maria sent the men to the fields and then she slit her daughter's throat and the throat of her other two children...then killed herself. All this happened on September 13 th 1801. There was

DeJoux House

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