About the Farm

Since 1999 Hall Farm Center has served as a resource for supporting and connecting a wide range of artists, educators, and students. Hall Farm’s rolling pastures and woods, the pond, and the farm compound offer the perfect embodiment of a life of quiet contemplation and creative possibility.

When renovations began in 1999, Hall Farm looked every bit of its two hundred plus years. The property lacked electricity and water was provided from a hand-pump. Over the course of that year Hall Farm was brought into the 20th-century while retaining the feel and spirit of a Vermont farm in the 1800’s. What was once the barn now serves as the communal hub of Hall Farm. It features a book and music library, wireless internet, telephones, a dining room, and kitchen. The farmhouse has been completely renovated and provides housing for artists in residents and other participants in Hall Farm programs. Other farm buildings have renovated and are used as studio space.

History of Hall Farm

In 1790, a lone census taker made his way up a steep, winding road to a hilltop farm in Townshend, Vermont. There he found a farmer named John Whipple, his wife, 2 sons, Otis and young John, and two other women (women’s names were not recorded in the census). The family had lived there since the mid 1780’s and would remain until 1831 when Whipple sold the farm to a young Alan Holbrook (age 9) and his uncle, Pardon Holbrook.

In January of 1863 the farm was purchased by Bill Miles, a local blacksmith who proceeded to set up his shop atop the hill. Miles also served as a Sergeant in the Union Army, but was called Colonel by his friends who thought him quite well spoken. In 1864, Bill was serving in Company I of the 4th Regiment of the Union Army with his friend and fellow Townshend resident Charles Hall. In June of that year, the Regiment made a disastrous and failed attack on the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, Virginia. While Bill managed to escape, Charles was captured by Confederate soldiers and imprisoned in the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp where he would remain until November 1964. After the war, both men returned to Townshend and remained friends. In March of 1888, Charles and his wife Delia moved up to the farm eventually purchasing it from Miles in March of 1892. They would remain well into the 20th Century.

In 1940, in her book New England Year: A Journal of Vermont Farm Life, Muriel Follett wrote of a visit to Hall Farm:

“One would never dream there was a road leading somewhere, as we turned off the main road and started up the hill. The rough road wound through the woods, with branches from the trees touching the car on either side. It seemed like a different world we had entered and the car was a thing out of place. We should be riding in an oxcart or, at best, a buggy. And then, around a sharp turn in the road, a gray weather-beaten farmhouse came into sight. It looked old, old as though it had been there forever, and I had the strangest feeling of having stepped back in time fifty years or more. The very atmosphere feels old-old world. It’s the strangest sensation! When I started up that hill I felt like a normal adult able to cope with my world, but after spending an hour with them I felt like Alice in Wonderland, growing smaller and smaller and younger all the time.”

By mid century, what was now know as Hall Farm changed hands several times – from Charles Hall to Ray Bemis to Royal Cutts, who finally sold it to Benjamin Lawrence for $3,000 in the 1950’s.

In February 1958 Hall Farm was purchased by Kaye E. Paulus & Eleanor Paulus who eventually turned it over to their son Jeremy who retained ownership until 1999 when it was purchased by Scott Browning and Philip Schoolman and founded as The Hall Farm Center for Arts & Education.