Forced to sell the family farm after 240 years
Farmer Frank DU R HAM, hobbled into the house, cane in hand.
“Sow got out of her pen, had to chase her down,” said Farmer Frank — Frank Hull, 71 — whose body, ravaged from decades of heavy manual work, is no longer built for chasing sows.
For half a century, he and his wife, Sherry, 67, have run their 260-acre farm here in the upper Catskills, about two hours north of New York City.
Known as Hull-O Farms, it has been in Frank Hull’s family since his forebear, John Hull, founded it about 240 years and seven generations ago.
It is one of the oldest farms in the country continually owned and run by the same family. But that lineage is about to end.
The Hulls can no longer handle the strenuous physical work needed to earn enough to keep up with the taxes, insurance, mortgages, barn maintenance and other rising costs, so they are putting the farm on the market.
“We don’t want to leave the land,” Sherry Hull said. “But we’re running out of options.”
The Hulls are part of the graying of America’s farmers.
One in three farmers in the country is 65 or older, and scores of small farms across the country close each year because their aging proprietors don’t have successors.
In 2017, when the last federal agriculture census was taken, the average age of a farm owner or manager was 58.6 — more than 8 years older than in the early 1980s. That year, there were 2,042,220 farms in the country, representing a loss of 173,656 farms over the previous two decades.
In New York state alone, 1.8 million acres of farmland are owned by people 65 and older, many of whom are financially unprepared for retirement and often wind up making the quickest and most lucrative move: selling to developers, said David Haight, an official with American Farmland Trust, which connects aspiring farmers with available farmland.
Some 5,000 farms in New York state have been sold for real estate development since 1982, he said.
“Many farming families are in the Hulls’ situation or getting near it,” Haight said. “They’re land-rich and cash-poor, and they’re saying, ‘What do we do with this family business we’ve created, particularly if we didn’t make the money we anticipated making?’ ”
Old family photos from generations of Hull farmers decorate the 1810 farmhouse.
To honor the family legacy, the Hulls have kept farming, even as her once boundless energy has diminished and his body has become riddled with arthritis. The couple says they haven’t been on a family vacation since their honeymoon 48 years ago.
“We have one nostril above water and nothing to live on,” Sherry Hull said. “We have no pension because we’ve put every penny we’ve made back into the farm. I tell people, ‘We’re standing on our 401(k).’ And now, it looks like the farm has to close so we can survive.”
Frank Hull carries out daily chores including feeding and watering the livestock, growing and harvesting hay and corn, and raising grass-fed cattle, hogs, chickens and pheasant.
He butchers and sells much of the meat at the farm, along with farm-fresh eggs.
“If Frank stops working, he feels he’s letting his relatives down and that the whole family line is broken,” his wife said. “I know it doesn’t make sense because they’re dead, but you feel like you have a commitment to carry on what every one of them has done successfully in the past.”
Frank Hull nodded and said: “It’s your heritage and you hate to give it up. I’m stubborn. I don’t like to say uncle.”
Each of the Hulls’ four sons grew up working on the farm, but none have wanted to take it over — not even the youngest, Jared, 36, who works on the farm.
Two sons have moved out of state, and the son most likely to take over the farm, Jordon, died in a vehicular accident in 2010. Even while in mourning and arranging for the funeral, the Hulls were still not able to stop the daily work on the farm, Sherry Hull said.
For decades, they were primarily a dairy farm and produced up to 750 gallons of milk per day. But in the late 1980s, with milk prices sagging, they began selling off their 260 milking cows and diversified their farm strategy.
They began offering “farmstay” guest accommodations, attracting families from New York City. The visitors enjoy Sherry Hull’s farm-sourced meals and doing chores. In the fall, there is a corn maze and hay rides. December’s theme is a charming farmhouse Christmas.
These peak tourism times take a toll on Sherry Hull, who a decade ago could knock out 80 meals per weekend on just four hours’ sleep.
“I can’t do that anymore at 67,” she said.
For Frank Hull, the past decade has brought growing injuries and decades-old pain from handmilking cows, holding struggling horses during breeding and continually twisting in the tractor seat.
He fits in surgeries and procedures between corn, deer and hay season.
“You can see his body is in need of surgery,” Sherry Hull said. “He deserves a day off and not to have to work till he dies.”
Frank Hull listened and gazed out across the fields.
“Farmers don’t retire,” he said softly, almost to himself.
But his wife keeps telling him that he will soon have no choice. She said she will keep taking guest reservations while the farm is on the market, and pray for another solution that could perhaps entail selling or renting part of their land.
“We’re still weighing all our options, and if anyone has an arrangement that could keep us here, we’re not proud people,” she said. “If not, then it’s God’s will that we’ll have to sell.”