Living in Harmony

Bernie and Mary Ellen Smith have always enjoyed a challenge. In 1978, they were spending their weekends searching for a farm in Rhode Island. They drove by a 28-acre property for sale in Harmony, a rural village in the state's north-central area, but the price was too expensive for their budget. On a whim, they drove up the driveway and the owner, a widow who had lived there most of her life, greeted them. When she learned their names, she told them that another (unrelated) Mary Ellen Smith had lived in the house in the 1800s. That coincidence and the Smiths' plan to restore the house and farm convinced her to lower the price so the young couple could afford the property.

A colonial fixer-upper

The house, a classic New England colonial, had been built in 1796 and showed its age. "It was a mess," says Mary Ellen. "Our friends thought we were crazy to buy it. Newspapers, rugs, and tile covered the floors. And under all that were these old wood floors. The widow must have had at least 10 cats. We had to knock out plaster to get rid of the cat smell."

A combination of no insulation and the original windows' thin panes made the house extremely drafty in winter. Bernie laughs as he recalls going to bed at seven o'clock some evenings just to warm up. That chill paid off unexpectedly, though. Previous owners had allowed the woods to overgrow the fields. As the Smiths cleared the trees with their friends' and relatives' help, they sold firewood to pay for a wood-burning boiler to heat the house. The man installing the boiler learned that Bernie planned to grow Christmas trees, and he pointed out that there were numerous tree farms in the area. "He suggested we grow blueberries," says Bernie. "There was a very small blueberry grower in central Rhode Island, but otherwise the closest farms were in Connecticut. I had already bought about 1,000 tree seedlings, but his suggestion made sense."