REMEMBERING TOPSMEAD:

Conversations with Bob Orintas

Summertime at Topsmead

Harvesting Hay at Topsmead

Summer was when I spent the most time at Topsmead. In early July everyone pitched in to help with the first cutting of hay. The first cutting is the best, most nutritious hay of the year. Hay was actually the primary crop for Topsmead Farm – even more so than apples. Miss Chase grew hay for her own use at Topsmead, and she rented out several fields for other farmers to grow hay on too. Hay was stored loose in the top of the barn until we got a baler in the early 1950s.
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Topsmead Events & Activities

by Margaret Hunt

SAVOR SUMMER | August 2022 

Topsmead is the perfect place to escape the heat of August and savor summer, but do it while you can.  Fall is lurking. 
 
Stroll around Miss Edith’s cottage.  Yes, the pots of flowers artfully placed on the tops of the cottage’s stonewalls and at the kitchen steps are blooming merrily, but look closely and you will sense that they are reaching their peak.  Yes, flowers in the gardens are soaking up the sunshine, but look carefully and you will notice poodle skirts of fallen petals spread on the ground beneath the phlox.  
 
Then, follow the gravel drive out to the classic New England stonewalls bordering the fields.  If you look closely along the tops of those walls, you may see a red leaf or two glistening gemlike and adorning the grey surfaces of the stones.  Those red leaves are the first vibrato notes of the clarion call of fall.
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Early summer panorama of the meadow at Topsmead by Tom Holzel

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