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Butcher revisits town's Goldstein Farm

Goldstein Farm as it stands today. Reminder Publications submitted photo
By Amanda Butcher

A special to Reminder Publications



My name is Amanda Butcher, and I am an author, a student, an actress and, most recently, a journalist. I will be entering the 10th grade this fall at East Longmeadow High School. I run track, act in the community theater and love to write. My first novel, "Lark and the Magic Pencil," was published last November.

I began to study the history of our town with the Historical Commission at the East Longmeadow Public Library after doing a book signing for them in April. I am learning many new things about our town.

Members of the Historical Commission asked me to write articles for them. Because I love to write, I accepted the offer to write in the Reminder monthly. Last month, I wrote about the history of the parades in our town from the point of view of a person who was brought to the past by a ghost. Each month, I hope you enjoy reading about the history of our town as much as I enjoy learning about it.




A Flash From the Past: The Legend of the Goldstein Farm

Last night, I awoke at midnight to hear the mournful hoot of a lonely owl. Thunder boomed from faraway. A coyote howled in the field across the street, and the creaking of the old windmill at the Goldstein Farm began.

The old Goldstein Farm is one of my favorite things to see every morning. Behind a wall made of redstone, it looms as one of the oldest homes in East Longmeadow. Its windmill and silo, though they have been out of work for some time, make it a picturesque farmhouse.

Its vast expanse of land has been used as farmland since Ebenezer McGregory built the house in 1790. I had the recent opportunity to interview Ronald Goldstein, the current owner of both land and house. He admitted that he "won't have much of a crop this year because the deer ate most of it," but he planted pumpkins, some corn, lots of tomatoes and different kinds of squash in his extensive farmland, totaling about 258 acres.

Samuel Goldstein, the father of Ronald, bought the farm many years ago from the Markham family and raised dairy cows on his huge plot of land Swiss milk cows for his wife, Marie, who was also Swiss. Goldstein told me that a cow tunnel is located under the current Somers Road to be used by the dairy cows that were raised there. Samuel also raised Belgian workhorses (to work the fields) and chickens. Field hands lived behind the farm in a gray house.

The stone wall in front of the Goldstein Farm was built in the early 1950s. Before it was put up, drivers would fly down Somers Road past the farm after hours. Not expecting the sharp curve in the road before the farm, drivers ran into the picket fence onto the Goldsteins' property. Ronald used to call it "suicide corner," especially after the stone wall replaced the picket fence. Drivers did not speed around that corner so dangerously again.

In August 1955, Hurricane Diane swept through Western Massachusetts, devastating much of this area. Much of Somers Road was destroyed but the Goldstein Farm remained untouched. "The water came to the doorstep," Goldstein said, "but it didn't enter the house." The field hands' gray house behind the barn was flooded by about three feet of water. The house was moved so that this would never happen again. Because that portion of Somers Road was destroyed by the floodwater, traffic could not get anywhere by this roadway.

Goldstein had a sparkle in his eye when he declared, "My neighbor and I made a raft out of an old fence and floated over Pease Road, almost all the way to Connecticut!"

Somers Road was moved and elevated, leaving its former location so that it wouldn't be so horribly flooded if another hurricane swept through New England. The strip of road that was left behind was named South Bend Lane, and that is where the Goldstein Farm stands to this day.

I would love to see the farm restored to its former glory, so that all can see what it looked like in its prime. Until then .

I gaze out the window across the street. The windmill begins to creak again, screeching and shrieking loudly. Lightning flashes, and for a moment, the majestic yet foreboding Goldstein Farm is all I can see.