Until preservation of irreplaceable historic American buildings and sites became a significant movement in recent years, many icons of the nation's early years regrettably were lost to bulldozers clearing the way for modern-day homes and commercial complexes that last less than a human lifetime.
Another of those remarkably hardy historic sites is now threatened with extinction, unless a private buyer or philanthropic group devoted to preserving America's heritage step in and devote proper care and funding to maintain it.
After 378 years in the hands of the pre-colonial Tuttle family, the 134-acre farm near Dover, N.H., bearing the family name is up for sale for $3.35 million. Tuttle descendants have exhausted their financial and emotional resources trying to compete with government-subsidized corporate farming.
Ancestor John Tuttle plowed out the original farm using a land grant from King Charles I of England. It has been dubbed the nation's oldest existing farm by the Department of Agriculture.
For 11 generations, the farm has produced sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and, in recent years, gourmet cheeses, baked goods and flowering plants. As an example of self-sufficiency, it is worthy of study that could inform the future.
Surely, an existing farm that began growing foods 144 years before the founding of the United States is as worthy of preservation as Revolutionary War and Civil War battlefields known principally as killing fields for tens of thousands of doomed soldiers.
