Historic Heaven Hill property to become working research farm
By Tim Rowland
The high plains east of North Elba challenge the notion that agriculture in the Adirondacks is unworkable. These fields of heart-stopping beauty once supported prize-winning Jersey and Devon cattle and produced more potatoes than a single warehouse could hold.
Storied Adirondackers — including early pioneer Horatio Hinkley, the abolitionist John Brown, Lyman Epps, a Black homesteader, the wealthy Philadelphian Anna Newman, Schlitz brewing scion and sportsman Henry Uihlein II and researchers for Cornell University — all made a go of lands Brown referred to as the Plains of Abraham.
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Uihlein died in 1997 at the age of 101 and transferred his Heaven Hill Farm, including more than 1,300 acres of field and forest, to what would become the philanthropic Uihlein Foundation, which each year financially supports causes near to the heart of Henry and his wife Mildred.
As the foundation celebrated its 25th anniversary over the weekend, it also announced plans to return 300 acres of fallow fields at Heaven Hill to their agricultural roots by establishing a working research farm open to schools and the public to better connect people to their food sources and principles of conservation.
The idea remains consistent with the life of Henry Uihlein, who laid out the general directives for the foundation, but — understanding that times change — made them adaptable to meet contemporary needs. Agriculture was something he took seriously.
“Henry was more than a gentleman farmer,” said Erica Burns, an educator and farmer in Keene who pitched the idea to the foundation. “He had an internationally famous herd of Jersey cows and grew crops as well.”
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Curiously, the land had an educational and farm-to-table component dating back more than a century, when the Lake Placid Club needed a dependable supply of food.
“The Lake Placid Club purchased those farms to feed their guests, and then Henry purchased that property from the Lake Placid Club,” Burns said. “There was an agreement that the club would buy their milk from Henry, and that guests of the club would always be able to come see where their food was coming from. Way back then he believed that they should be able to do that.”
When Burns looks at those same fields today, she envisions animals grazing and crops growing as school students and the public see agricultural production first hand. The farm would be home to research that will support local farmers and foster conservation efforts, such as grassland bird conservation.
Bringing food, conservation together at Uihlein Farm
A couple of developments made Burns’ idea attractive, said Jim McKenna, CEO of the Uihlein Foundation. In 2020, Cornell shut down its potato farm, and the community held its breath to see what would happen to the open fields with their million-dollar views of the High Peaks and surrounding mountains. In the end, Cornell — which had been given the land by Henry Uihlein for free — gave it back to the foundation. At the same time, Uihlein was considering its own future.
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“We realized about two years ago that the land is our best asset, so the question became, how can we now implement Henry’s guidelines and get partnerships with other similar organizations moving forward,” McKenna said.
While it will continue its charitable donations and the partnerships it has cultivated over the years, McKenna said Uihlein is changing its status with the IRS from a private foundation to a private operating foundation, the difference being an emphasis on programming.
“What we’re envisioning as we move forward is to develop some programs and processes where we can get into the agriculture and agriculture research that Henry identified, while serving as a resource for the region,” he said. “Maybe we can do things to help local farmers, and we’re also thinking about educational purposes and also feeding the locals again.”
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Uihlein, credited with bringing the Olympics to Lake Placid in 1932, stressed five areas in which his estate was to focus: winter sports, conservation, education, research and agriculture. Burns said a working farm can feature all five.
“It’s kind of like one great big puzzle in figuring out how those pieces can work together to create some really cool programming that the foundation can keep moving forward with,” she said. “I see these fields really full of farm life in a lot of different ways. Maybe there’s some fruit trees and certainly some garden spaces and some horses and some cows and some chickens.”
Burns is working with local schools, which are highly receptive to the idea of an educational farm. She’s also quizzed students to find out what’s important to them. Kids liked the idea of a farm whose products would show up in school cafeterias. They want a nature center and goats — lots of goats. One girl said it was important for the farm to be beautiful and not smell.
To that end, McKenna said it’s important the view-sheds be preserved. Barns, for example, will be built on a low spot on the property so as not to interfere with the iconic vistas.
Burns said the considerable history of the land enriches the experience, which never lacked for colorful characters. Though Brown and Uihlein himself are well-known, Epps’ story flies in the face of white histories suggesting Black people failed at Adirondack farming. While Newman was, in her obit, dubbed “the strangest Adirondack woman” for her eccentricities — one of which was her firm conclusion that men were useless, perhaps making her not so much eccentric as ahead of her time.
The Uihlein farm also has a chance to dispel the conventional wisdom that the Adirondacks cannot be farmed. Nothing set off the opinionated Lake Placid historian Mary MacKenzie, who battled this “screwball” characterization at every turn, like a boilerplate reference to farming futility. MacKenzie believed that successful family farms disappeared in the Adirondacks for the same reason they did everywhere else — farming became scaled-up big business.
In sketching out what the Uihlein farm might look like, Burns said she’s drawn from other successful operations that mirror what she hopes to do.
One is the Greenacres Foundation, an educational and cultural farm estate near Cincinnati, established by Louis and Louise Nippert. In a slideshow of the farm, Burns said she was shown a photograph of the Nipperts, one that had puzzled the Greenacres staff because the couple was standing in front of mountains considerably higher than can be found in the Ohio flatlands.
“I was like, hold on, those are our mountains in the background,” Burns said. Sure enough, the Nipperts were at a social function at the Lake Placid golf course during one of their visits to the Adirondacks. The visit corresponded with the time the Uihleins themselves were purchasing Heaven Hill in 1941.
Would they have known each other, and even corresponded, Burns wondered, and would they have even been standing somewhere in the mix as the photo of the Nipperts was taken?
“I feel sure they knew each other, and were probably right there,” she said.
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