Maple Breeze Farm

Thank you for visiting our farm website today. We are owners/operators John and Bonnie Hall. This farm is so close to our hearts. Let us take you back into time….

My husband’s ancestors received a grant from the King of England to settle the original part of our farm in Westbrook, circa 1710. One of Silas A. Posts’ four sons, Joseph C. Post (1829-1908) marries Eunice M. Chittenden (1831-1911). As his inheritance, he receives a portion of the farm. He built our farmhouse on East Pond Meadow Road in 1850.

Joseph and Eunice have three daughters and two sons. Both sons die in infancy. One of the daughters, Ellen, marries Henry Wright. They have three daughters, one of them being Anna J. Wright (1886-1952).

Next to the farm on the west is the Pond Meadow One Room School House. After school, Anna spends her time with her grandparents at the farm. When she is of age, she becomes the school teacher and stays with her grandparents until she is married.

Anna meets John L. Hall (1885-1972) and falls madly in love with him. They marry in 1910 and add on to the farmhouse. They have two daughters and a son, John L. Hall Jr. (1923-2001). He marries Jane D. Green. They have a son and a daughter. This is where I marry the love of my life, their son, John L. Hall III.

Now we come to present day 2011. It is an exciting time for us at Maple Breeze Farm. Although food has been grown at our farm for centuries, lately ‘locally grown’ has become important to families interested in knowing where their food comes from. Now, thanks to Tarzia Meat Packing in New Milford, CT. a USDA-inspected site, we are able to offer our pork and beef to all.

We are proud members of Connecticut Farm Bureau. John has been on the board of directors for Middlesex County for a dozen years. He currently serves on the executive board of directors. We are also members of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and John is President of the American Milking Devon Cattle Association.

- Bonnie Hall

I would tell my mother stories of my adventures with both my future father-in-law, John Hall Jr. and husband, John Hall III. When John and I were married, my mother, June S. Rice, wrote this poem:

In his woods alive with dawning mist
walked the man John Hall.
Tramping changeless fields with fast, quick-silver feet
never missed a beat
John Hall knew the land.
Its rills and rocks and boggy depths of sinking sand
John Hall knew his land.
Planted corn, wheat, tall and regal pine
He knew its hills and crags
Every boundary line.
Knew the creatures of his woods
Where the wild things recline
Read that big buck’s love letters
Written with prancing feet
On John Hall’s soil sublime.
(He would scoff now at this silly rhyme!)

Heard the wind’s last song
Spinning cobweb dreams
High in the rafters of his barn
John Hall was a rare, unfettered man.
He came that day
It was the 11th of June
(the day brought rain, like April or May).
Ambling down the aisle
Eyes twinkling in secret mirth,
Not tall, more brawn than girth
Wearing his best gold suit
Proud of his big son, ox-strong John Hall III
Marrying the Bonnie girl with the golden hair
Waiting with a certain flair
At the old, church altar,
(that day even old John’s steps did not falter!)
Did it bring back a dream?
Something grand? Supreme?

He had no time for superfluous things
Like priest or purse or protocol
He was a fine man, John Hall.
Bred on Yankee ingenuity
And perpetuity
Beard as long as he was tall
Deeply furrowed, saintly bowed, like the grey birches
He swung on.
John Hall, the man and once a child.
His fiddling arm as fast as his feet,
But his language, good heavens!
Could shock the elite!

Woodlore replenished his ‘oft silent speech
Muddy pig-styes, winnowing hay
You could tell he loved life
And enjoyed a good fray!
Could fleck a fly from the eye of a cow
With the twist of his wrist
(the cow would be dazed, but just for awhile)
But the lore of the land
Oh, he guarded it well!

John Hall, the man
That time did foretell
From the crest of the rock
To the wide sweep of field
A pledge to his forebears
(One never could tell)
Listen, o children!
For his footsteps remain
As he climbs the last ridge
To survey his domain.

- June S. Rice