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In the forest just up the crest that overlooks Lusscroft Farm in Sussex can be found a peculiar structure with a history to match. In the 1930s James Turner, who owned the farm down the mountain, crafted the lodge as a gift for his brother William. Because of the grand view from this bluff, the building was named Outlook Lodge. The timbers for these walls and ceilings are the remains of some 25 antique Sussex County barns, and the floor boards are from an old grist mill that used to sit in Branchville.
Until the 1950s, Boy Scouts, 4-H members, Future Farmers of America and church groups used the lodge. In 1956 a kitchen and bathrooms were added, and the lodge became a dormitory building for forestry students of Cook College (now the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences) in the summer season. The forestry program deactivated in 1975. In 1996, due to lack of enrollment and mounting maintenance costs, the grounds closed for good.
Years of disuse find the lodge approaching collapse. There are some moisture issues, but the main problem is that the weight of the roof is too much for the structure of the building. It needs to be reinforced in order to last. But is this forlorn Frankenstein’s Monster of a building worth the sweat and money?
Its whimsical piecemeal construction may prove to be its saving grace. Some call the lodge one of the finest examples of arts and craft style architecture in New Jersey.
The farmland and lodge are now in the hands of the NJ State Park Service and the State Agricultural Development Committee, which, along with the Heritage and Agriculture Association, are planning to stabilize the old lodge and restore the deteriorating farm.
Photos and Story by Rusty Tagliareni
In 1835, 40 school children sat at double desks in this high-ceilinged one-room building, facing the blackboard. In one corner was a bookcase, in the other, a sewing machine. In the middle of the room, a coal stove gave off warmth.
The Free Union Schoolhouse in Warren County, NJ closed in 1945 and became a residence in the 1950s. Since then, it has known several owners, but it wasn’t until Lorna and Phil Wooldridge bought it that the building turned back into a school – a home school for their son Jack, and for students Lorna tutors – and into a prime example of efficiency and forward thinking.
On under an acre, the Wooldridges grow vegetables, herbs and a pollinator garden full of goldenrod, Joe-Pye weed and Sundrops. It’s all fertilized from their compost piles, which include manure from local farms and 200 pounds of bat guano that Phil harvested from the rafters of the old church across the road and lugged home in chicken feed bags. They raise chickens and honeybees, which reminded me of their presence by bouncing off my head. They tag monarch butterflies, so others along the migratory path will know where they’ve been.
The flooring is local hardwood, laid by Phil. Clothing is hand-washed and air dried, and in the cooler months the woodburning stove doubles as a dryer. A rooftop solar panel provides hot water, and a pickup sits in the driveway. What’s forward thinking about a pickup, you ask? The thing runs off used cooking oil collected from a local restaurant.
The Wooldridges plan to do away with the plastic siding, a remnant from a previous owner, so that their home more closely resembles the old schoolhouse. They are weighing the costs – financial and environmental – of such a project.
Four years ago, I came to the conclusion that commercial television is addictive and unhealthy, and I quit watching. Since then, I find myself getting disgusted when I’m in a situation where I have no choice but to be harassed by advertisements telling me what to buy, what to be afraid of, how to think.
So it goes without saying that when it gradually became clear that my company would be getting rid of televisions by the dozens, I was pleased. But I’m here to tell you, it’s not all that easy to find a place to put old TVs without throwing them into a landfill.
My company, BeeLine Moving & Hauling, represents recycling. Whenever it’s possible to avoid adding something to the landfill, we do. We have no problem putting usable furniture back into the community through donations to the needy, but I find it much harder to get rid of those old TVs.
And believe me when I say they pile up fast. In a society whose mantra seems to be “out with the old, in with the new,” keeping up with rapidly evolving technology means constantly upgrading electronics and chucking the older versions. As a result, on practically every junk hauling job, we come across TVs from concave black-and-white to flat-panel LCD.
Even the neediest families don’t seem to want old technology, so TVs are hard to donate. I’ve even tried listing them in the “free” category on Craigslist. Few takers. And it gets too expensive for us to store dozens of unwanted TVs that will probably never find a home.
The answer?
Electronics can be recycled. Many TV, computer and cell phone manufacturers, along with electronics retailers, are now offering some kind of take-back program. Some also sponsor recycling events. Google “recycling electronics,” and you’re likely to find an option that works for you.
For those TVs that end up in my junk trailer, I’m finding that more and more landfills are offering a recycling option for electronics. This means taking the time to sort the electronics from the rest of the junk, but it’s worth the effort. Otherwise, at the rate consumers go through electronics, our landfills will be buzzing at the seams.
– Brendan Mullally
Photos and text by Rusty Tagliareni
When you think “plastics,” what do you see? Images, perhaps, of mass production, factories, and landfills. You probably don’t think about your topsy turvy tomato, or the fact that it resides in a petroleum-based planter.
What a buzzkill! When you’re outside ga
rdening, you’re enjoying that zen-like feeling of wholeness and connection with the greater world. You don’t want to be thinking of the baseball stadium of gardening plastic that the U.S. generates each year. But that incongruity is getting harder to ignore.
Innovative companies have started making biodegradable and plantable pots out of bamboo, cow manure, cocoa and spruce fiber, and some nurseries are starting recycling programs that turn old pots into things like plastic lumber that can be used to make raised beds. But there’s another way to avoid using plastic, and it’s no sacrifice either. As far as planters go, there are far better options out there than the cookie-cutter plastic jobs. Walk into most any antique store and you’ll find something begging to be filled with dirt.
Fueled by the spirit of this column, I find myself upon my motorcycle riding into the heart of Warwick to visit an antique shop, The Eclectic Eye. I set out to find items that, though broken, are by no means trash; things that could be refashioned into unique homes for plant life.
When in such a mindset, most everything can be seen as a planter of some kind. Imagine flowers sprouting out of an old bedpan, or ivy creeping from a long disused cast-iron heater. Because I was on my bike, I had to find something small enough to stow for the ride home. I came upon what I was looking for in the form of an old oil lantern. This little lamp had lit many years, and had lost many of its innards along the way. I found something endearing about it. When it comes to gardening, I am far from skilled in the art, but even I was able to fashion this old lamp into something far more interesting than the sum of its parts.
Going one, going twice
Not long ago I received a call from the manager of a storage facility who needed an abandoned unit cleared out. When units are deserted like this, they are usually auctioned off to the highest bidder. Those participating in the auction are allowed to stand at the entrance to look inside, but that’s all. They are not permitted to rummage through before making their decision to bid or not.
Exploring with an eye out for cool stuff has always been a hobby. Wherever I found myself, I hoped to stumble upon tokens telling silent stories lost in the shadows of time,whether it was rummaging through dilapidated barns to find a rusty tool or horseshoe; climbing into attics to find photos of faded families against milky skies; or venturing into the depths of basement catacombs to find forgotten trophies caked in dust.
But when I lifted the door, I got the creeps. I was not surprised that no one had bid. Diagonally across the entranceway was a queen size bed carelessly resting against the sidewall as if to block the way. Behind the mattress were mangled boxes and women’s clothes scattered about as if someone had ransacked the place looking for something very important. Baby clothes and toys were also strewn about. The unit was a chaotic mess, and the thought of finding something cool was replaced with wonder. What happened here?
I have to admit, my imagination did conjure up some gruesome explanations after finding a family photo of a mother, father and little girl, in which the father had a rather insane smirk and sketchy eyes. But that’s fiction. Behind that photo, however, buried beneath what could have been a wedding dress, was something very real and beautiful. I wasn’t in a catacomb, but it was dark, and here was this frayed, seemingly ancient Egyptian cloth painting in a stunning mahogany and gold frame.
Is it a priceless piece of art? Not quite. But it is a salvaged piece of someone’s past that, for whatever reason, was left entombed in one small unit in a giant storage facility. Now it can be seen and appreciated again while it hangs elegantly on the wall of my new home.
– Brendan Mullally
Mullally owns Beeline Moving & Hauling and founded Junk for Charity, which delivers unwanted furniture to families in need.
Photos by Rusty Tagliereni
New York has 13 schools for the children of migrant farm workers, but one stands alone on a hill.
“Nobody has grounds like this,” said Susan Dingee, outreach director for Agri-Business Child Development, on a recent tour of House on the Hill in Goshen. “Nobody has woodwork like this.”
“Or 300 acres for the kids to play,” pitched in Sister Jean Graffweg, the de-facto school mother, who’s been working at House on the Hill for 29 years.
In 1925, the building was a novitiate where young nuns of the order of the Sisters of St. Dominic came to pray. Then it became a private boarding school for girls. For two years in the early seventies, it sat vacant, until Sister Jean Marie Rathgabar, academic dean at Dominican College, saw the children of farm workers playing in the fields and asked to turn the building into a child care center. Now the former nunnery, its massive fireplaces and chandeliers intact, rings with Spanish and teems with 72 students from six weeks to five years old.
Weekdays at 6 a.m., buses with rear-facing infant seats and toddler car seats pick the kids up from their homes in Middletown and Goshen, which may be labor camps or shared apartments, long cinderblock buildings or trailer homes. Many have come from the Mexican cities Puebla, Jalesco, and Oaxaca, said Sister Jean, dragging out a giant colored map on which the kids pinpoint their birthplaces.
At school, each child is greeted by name and fed breakfast, and brushes her teeth. Then it’s time to learn. The focus is on English (after age three) and social competence, so they’re ready when they graduate at age five to enter public schools in Goshen, Chester, Warwick, and Middletown.
House on the Hill is federally funded by Head Start and state funded by the New York State Federation of Growers. Sister Jean fills out so many grant applications it makes her a little crazy.
“But when I’ve had it up to here,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead, “I just take myself into one of the classrooms and become revived. The kids express so much joy, it’s life-giving.” As she spoke, Sister Jean picked confetti out of her hair from an explosive Easter celebration.
Dating from the 1890s, this French pig boar (sorry) witness to France’s transition to the Fifth Republic in 1959, a government under which France remains to this day. Photo by Rusty Tagliareni
It’s like having Yankee stadium seats in your living room: you get a piece of history, a part of your childhood, plus a place to sit.
“People collect ‘em,” said Joe Happle, who has these three hand-carved carousel animals in his antique store, the Lafayette Mill Antiques Center, and more on display at home. “Like you would a Picasso.”
These days hand-carved carousel animals are recognized and collected as works of art, but it wasn’t always so.
Before the 1960s, they were “going into dumpsters, or used as firewood to keep warm,” said Roland Hopkins, editor of Carousel News.
Now they are so valuable that entire carousels have been broken up and sold because one or two figures were worth more than the entire machine.
So what’s the appeal? Generations of memories of simpler times. “I don’t think you get the same warm fuzzy feeling at Six Flags that you’d get at Playland or parks like that that are long gone. Many generations have ridden the same rides,” said Hopkins.
Don’t have fond memories of riding in circles on a pig? You’re not alone. “A lot of these people who have these figures are getting a little older. Some of the people have quite a few. They tell me flat out: you know, I’ve got kids, but they might each take one.”
One-of-a-kind lions, tigers and even giraffes are ending up at auctions, museums and antique stores.
“If you like ‘em,” said Happle, “you’ll find a place for ‘em.”
dirt 