For more than 200 years, the sprawling farmhouse and barns at Skolfield Farm, also known as Merrucoonegan Farm, have perched high on a hill like a historical gateway to Harpswell.
A stone’s throw from the Harpswell-Brunswick line on State Route 123, the farm fed generations of Skolfield family members with dairy products, beef and produce. These days, apples and cider from an orchard are sold, but there is no other farming on the property.
John Dietlin, 30, the seventh generation of the Skolfield family to work the property, plans to change that.
Dietlin said he is “digging in” to reinvigorate the farm. Last year, he built a farm stand near the road. He and his fiancee, Courtney Feeney, also 30, sell seedlings, plants and flowers alongside the apples and cider.
The farm stand is adjacent to Skolfield Shores Preserve and its network of trails. The Harpswell Heritage Land Trust purchased that land, which once belonged to Skolfields, in 2002.
Linda Barton, a veterinarian, is the sixth generation of Skolfields to live on the farm. She tends the apple orchard her grandfather planted. In autumn, she sells apples, self-serve style, from a tractor parked near Harpswell Neck Road.
On a warm June day, Barton, Dietlin, and Feeney sat at a picnic table adjacent to Nance’s Seafood Shanty, a weekend fried food kiosk owned by Nancy Barton, who is Dietlin’s mother and Barton’s sister. They reminisced about the rich history of the farm and chatted about its future as motorists passed by and waved.
In 1725, Thomas Skolfield emigrated from Ireland to Boston. In 1739, he purchased 200 acres that became the farm.
Skolfield’s descendants were well-known shipbuilders who owned and operated a shipyard across from the farm at Skolfield Cove. From 1799 to 1885, more than 100 brigs, schooners, or three-masted, square-rigged ships left the yard for East Coast ports and the Caribbean.
“When they built ships, they had to eat,” said Barton, 73. Over the years, the property had farm animals and the Skolfields grew produce, including corn, potatoes, strawberries and turnips.
The farmhouse is unique. The original center of the two-story structure is called a “double connected barn.” It was built by brothers George and Sam Skolfield around 1800 as one dwelling with a center staircase. By 1812, the brothers had constructed a wing on each end of the house and a barn for their families.
The farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, in part for the building’s status as “the most extensive and impressive example of extended or continuous architecture remaining and perhaps ever existing in Maine and possibly New England,” according to the nomination form.
Dietlin and Feeney, the new generation of Skolfield farmers, grow flowers and seedlings in two large gardens at their Bowdoin home and haul them to the Harpswell farm stand to sell. They make cider in the fall from the apple orchard.
Right now, Dietlin works as a detective at the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office. Feeney works for the county as a dispatcher. But eventually the farm will be a full-time endeavor for both.
“We have five- and 10-year plans,” Feeney said. “We’re not trying to rush anything.”
“I have so many ideas,” she said. She wants to sell canned goods and homemade spices, along with kits for customers to build their own lunches.
Knowing her nephew wants to continue the family tradition of running the farm “is a huge relief to me,” said Barton, who has no children.
After her mother died in 2018, Barton inherited the half of the Skolfield farmhouse closest to Harpswell Neck Road. She rents out the upstairs.
Stretched across one side of the “new” barn, rebuilt in 1897, is a unique sign — an eagle with outstretched wings clutching a banner that says “Merrucoonegan Farm,” a name once given to the property by Hannah “Fannie” Skolfield.
“Merrucoonegan” is a Native American word for “easy carrying place.” It has various spellings, including Merriconeag, the name of the Harpswell Grange, various geographical places, and a small yacht club. Merryconeag was the name of a Casco Bay steamboat built in the late 1800s.
The other half of the Skolfield house belonged to Barton’s great-uncle. It was divided into four apartments and sold twice, the last time in 2018 to Erik and Larkin Sol, who moved from Massachusetts. The family lives in one apartment and rents out the other three. The barn on their side of the property was rebuilt in 1834 to house carriage horses.
Sol is no stranger to agriculture. As a teacher, he worked on a farm for two summers. He also worked at Fenway Farms, the rooftop garden behind third base at the Boston Red Sox ballpark.
“We plan to have a garden,” he said. “The house is nothing but potential energy. When I envision a garden, it will be mostly for personal use.”
The farm is “such a cool place,” Sol continued. “You have this Goliath on the hill. It’s the last living testament to this family.”
“I consider myself more of a caretaker than an owner,” he said. “This place is an impressive part of the story of not just Maine, but of America.”
