07/21/2023
With a heavy heart this Dalton Dumesnil Farm FB site is closing.
After 60+ years and untold number of formative and revelatory experiences the farm has left the family and is under new ownership, farm-type folks who hopefully will love, and live, the place as thoroughly as we have and now will forever in memory.
I leave them, and All, with this, relative to the pictures posted alongside:
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This area is called "The Sycamore".
Up until around 20 years ago the biggest Sycamore tree I've ever known grew with a perfect symmetrical form that had a canopy spread that was at least 30' wider outside the round fenced area shown in the aerial photo.
We created the fence circle after the tree was gone in memory of the place it created, it's sheltering shade, it's people and animals and the events that drew us all together.
The Sycamore's high lower branches created an enormous round mottled-sky room and sported a tire swing and climb-ability of epic proportion. There is a Civil War era stagecoach road that runs through that bottomland, parts of the massacred Chenoweth Family lay on a ridge overlooking including Honest Abe's grandfather, supposedly.
We had huge family potluck Summer picnics under the cool shady cover of that spectacular Sycamore since the early 1960's with hay wagons loaded in under the perimeter cover and stacked hay bales brimming with Mom's and various aunt's & cousins floral decorations and late Summer garden bounty as poorly behaved joyous dogs attempted to bound away with gizzards and we feasted on fried farm-pond fish, deviled eggs and turkey legs.
Folks on ponies and horses all over the place, kids getting mud-caked creek-soaked filthy in Dalton Run Creek catching crawdads, ferocious Brown Water Snakes, softshell, slider, and snapping turtles and frogs aplenty..,prized Tadpoles!...and building epic stone dams and sluices. In that blessed shade pocket ol folks chillin in various states of repose, some flat out snoring loudly in Adirondack Chairs satiated by fried chicken and bourbon, on hay bales, sippin whatever was their pleasure tellin spectacular tales of hot hunt pursuits and reminiscing about long-gone steeds steaming in the silent perfect pre-sunrise after that first fine run of the day, now listening keenly over the pants and snort for the much anticipated hounds full cry and the distant moving calls of Whipper-ins and the Master of the hounds.
Back under the Sycamore, laughing, caterwauling till dark set in which sent us reluctantly packing back up the hill with the big old Massie-Ferguson pulling the whole train of wagons and all of us and everything else on board. A deepest-of-the-deep nap in the back of a setbelt-less station wagon while piled on a muck-encrusted beast or brother was soon to transpire...next thing you knew was the smell of Sunday morning bacon and a call to church as you wondered quizzically...how on Earth did I get here?!
The fenced-in circle has three different high canopy hardwood trees centered around the ancient stump site. There is a huge broken-in-two stone grist wheel there that needs to be properly centered that came from an old wharf mill in Downtown Louisville, dug up when they built Waterfront Park. The trees are an American Beech, a Ginkgo, and a Red Oak, in case a blight or a beetle comes through we're covered. The place is an informal memorial to the farm originators, my grandfather "Judge" Roscoe Dalton, MFH, "Uncle Ed" Dumesnil (the D's of D/D), and my father Stuart B. Dalton, MFH, and just recently passed Uncle Roger Dalton, a great friend and mentor to so many...as were they all. The farm was originally Long Run Farm and was the founding home of the Long Run Hounds (LRH) Foxhunting Club.
Both of my sons, Henry & Afton, were christened in Dalton Run Creek by Rev. Helen Jones where I performed The Four Directions Ceremony, a loose rendition of an Aboriginal American celebration of life's beginning-work-rest-end passage under the guidance of the Sun.
Today Dalton Dumesnil Farm End phase is realized.
The creek has been a bounty for many rock patio projects, a great source of material for that kind of thing, and myriad solo contemplative days on horse with dog. My big old furry long-gone dog Darwin (aka Dogboy), a Regal Prince among canines, rests on one of the hills above, overlooking all.
And throughout it all, overlording that gorgeous valley...The Sycamore.
It's been a pretty special place.
M Putney, son of Stuart Dalton
2023
