Belmont Farms

The barn is being taken down piece by piece to be reassembled in Elizabethtown, about 20 miles away. It is to be used for receptions and weddings. The barn is well over 100 years old. It is great it will be preserved! We are waiting to hear about the mansion??

This is the owner's mansion. The room on the roof was for his sickly daughter (TB) so she could look and see the lime quarry across the street.That is where her father made most of his money! I understand the mansion is the only structure to remain? The farm was several hundred acres.

This is a shot from across the street. This is where I grew up. At 1577 Fruitville Pike. heading north out of Lancaster City. We were about three quarters of a mile  south from Route 283 overpass. 

My dad's father was killed in a car accident, not his fault, and the driver paid no restitution. The Caldwell family were hired hands on the farm. When grandpa died they had to get out of the house. My mother saw an ad for a farm hand, grandpa Hess was looking for a new job, and they moved in this hired hands house. Daddy stayed on as the hired hand. Mom and he lived in the house. One thing led to another, and they were married! Yes the current owner of the farm was named Hess too. But anyone with our same last name that had money was not related to us. Hess, or Caldwell

I grew up in the third house, the brick one. Right across from the mansion.

This is the second house south from ours. This lane is a township road. It leads back to the quarry.

This is the alley behind the houses. My parents planted all the trees here and back at the quarry. My dad planted here so we had a place to ride our bikes, like roads.

The barn was a chicken house as long as I remember. Pennfield Farms contracted the barn to raise frying chickens. On all four floors, 72,000 chickens grew up there every 12 weeks. The first job I had at 12 years old was cleaning the wood shavings out when the chickens were collected for slaughter. Of course the shavings were their toilet too. When we cleaned the shavings, the ammonia from their waste products mixed with the sweat in our shoes and burned our feet. The next year I was sweeping backwards and got too close to one of the 6 by 6 trapdoors to push the sawdust down to the ground floor. I went from the fourth floor to the second floor. I suffer back pain yet today. It was the first of many traumas I would suffer in this life

http://topics.pennlive.com/tag/Belmont%20Farm/index.html  read about Belmont Farms here!

Pennfield filed for bankruptcy. Was bought by Wellsource Nutrition, a division of Cargill. This happened in 2012.

You are probably eating their chicken now!