Chicken coops plans

Once called Sycamore Farms, Martha’s new property was first settled in 1784 and is known locally, today, as Cantitoe Corners. (Cantitoe was the wife of an Indian chief named Katonah who lived in the region in the 1700s.)

Martha’s new home is more like a small village, with a series of houses and out-buildings dotting the expansive grounds. Martha resides in the 1925 farmhouse (the Winter House), shown above – a three-story abode fronted by a long porch and dormer windows on the third level. Adjacent to the farmhouse is the property’s original abode: a 1770 Colonial house, known as the Summer House. There is also a nearby tenant’s cottage, where her daughter, Alexis, lives when she is visiting.
[Incidentally, this is the property where Martha served her five months of house arrest – a time she describes as ‘hideous’ since her movements on the property were severely restricted.]
With rolling fields and swaying sycamore trees, the property is one of the finest in the region, adjacent to the home of fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

The town of Bedford could best be described as ‘gentrified English country’ with rustic stone walls and winding roads driven by men behind the wheels of antique roadsters. The women spend their days in the gardens with their hands in the soil, making fashion statements not with Blahniks or Birkin bags but with boastful peonies and endless daffodil borders.

The town was once famous for its Republicanism and old money – money that brought with it huge parcels of acreage and big stone houses on hilltops.

Today, the attitude here is decidedly casual and laid back with traditional roots still intact. The 1939 clock tower at Sutton Corners, for instance, is wound by hand each week by the neighbors. Many of the wealthy landowners are farmers, too, tending to their land and livestock in dirty dungarees.

The turnover of estates from old money to new (and Republican to Democrat) began in the mid-90s when billionaires like George Soros and Ralph Lauren bought up mini kingdoms around town, seeking land in ‘horse country’ that was still close to the epicenters of their empires: Bedford is just 44 miles north of Manhattan.

Music moguls and Hollywood stars soon replaced bankers and real-estate czars. People like Glenn Close, Chevy Chase, Tommy Mattola and Clive Davis have sprawling properties here, as do Meredith Vierra and Donald Trump.

Old money still lives on, though. Francis Kellogg still lives in his family’s 18th Century house at Mill Pond, and Robert F. Kennedy lives there with his family, tending to the region’s pollution control and water sanitation regulations.

Martha, who adores new projects, snapped up Cantitoe Farm when it went up for sale and she immediately wrote a mission statement for the property, a manifesto of dreams, as it were, outlining all of her desires and plans for what she hopes will be her main residence from now on.

Borrowing design and homestead philosophies from the Shaker communities in New York and Maine, Martha envisioned a farm of unparalleled practicality and style.