York Corner
Two Sundays ago when we stopped in at York Lobster and Seafood (formerly Finestkind) out on Route 1, two customers we met there reminded us of a local asset we tend to take for granted. The customers were Dave and Cindy Lauer, on their way back home to northeastern Pennsylvania (Berwick, as it happened, near Wilkesbarre and Scranton), they'd been visiting Debbie Kidd, Cindy's sister in York, and they were stocking up on fresh fish to take back with them.
"We can't get good seafood and fish at home," Cindy explained.
They come to see her sister as often as they can and "really like it here," she also said.
We learned that Cindy works for a Long Island-based company called Cedar Shopping Centers that manages about 90 such centers, while David has his own 12-year-old computer software business built around tool management - and one of his contracts is with Quantas Airlines.
Sister Debbi, Cindy said, works in Portsmouth, N.H., in customer support for Loftware, in work that has to do with bar-coding.
All of those enterprises sounded pretty interesting to us, and we could have asked a few dozen more questions about them, but Dave and Cindy had a seven-hour ride ahead of them, so we only had time to say goodbye and wish them and their treasured fish a safe trip home.
This past Sunday we took ourselves over to the new home (since May 20) of Maude Hutchins, now a full-fledged lobster and seafood-plus restaurant located at Foster's Clambake, at the corner of York Street and Axholme Road.
Our intent was to talk to founders and owners Lucy and Kent Gilgore, to see how their summer had gone and how they'd weathered their move and big expansion (they started in tiny quarters behind Bragdon Insurance in the Village, where they served only take-out) - but we never really got to talk to them because they were (happily) way too busy.
We ended up talking, instead, to customers, starting with York-residents Betty and Ken Doty, who were tucking into a lunch of fish and chips, and who obliged us by chatting a bit between bites.
"This is our first time here for a meal," Betty volunteered, "and it's excellent."
Ken, for those who don't know, is facility manager for the Coastal Ridge Elementary School, and he reminded us that he's been there since the place first opened in 1991 - "15 years," he said, quietly marveling.
Because it was pouring rain outside, we joked a little about all the problems the new school had had, early on, with roof leaks, and Ken reported that they're now "pretty well taken care of." He likes his job, he said, adding that, among all the pleasing aspects of it, "I love the kids."
Betty is a hair stylist who runs her own Betty's Beauty Salon out of her home on Old Post Road, but, as part of that work she provides a rare service for which she deserves applause: on one day of the four days a week that she works she takes her skills to the homes of people who can't come to her - mostly shut-ins, but sometimes just people who can't drive or are, for whatever reason, housebound.
While we were talking to Ken and Betty, we saw a horse trailer pass by outside, and shortly thereafter six people - three adults and three youngsters - came in, some dressed in riding gear and all soaked with rain but all also animated and laughing, so much so that it was hard not to be drawn into their circle.
They were from a place in Bedford, N.H., called The Educational Farm, we learned when we butted right in, and had brought two horses from there over to Long Sands specifically for a ride on the beach, their very first there.
They managed to squeeze that in before the rains came, then "had a good gallop in the rain," said Carol Whitson, still laughing as she identified herself as the farm's director. "We had a blast."
The Educational Farm, she explained, is a non-profit organization dedicated to practicing and teaching sustainable agriculture and biodynamic farming, with organic gardens, a small herd of milking cattle and a stable of Morgan horses of the Lambert strain. ("There are only 300 or so in the world. They go back to the original Morgan, Justin Morgan.")
The Farm, Carol said, teaches natural horsemanship (which she described as "non-competitive"), and provides weekly day camps for eight weeks across the summer, in which youngsters have fun learning "what it's like being a kid on a farm."
With Carol were the farm's treasurer, Dan Muskat, and one of its teachers, Giselle Chagnon, and Giselle told us that Carol started the enterprise five years ago when she successfully petitioned the Bedford Board of Selectmen to lease 50 acres of a once 310-acre farm to her instead of selling to developers. The plan, since realized: to turn the acreage into a community asset.
Dan, we were told, is a member of the family that has long owned the farm, known as Joppa Hill. "Joppa," said Carol in praising the site, its rolling fields and weathered history, "is Hebrew for 'beautiful place."
Carol and Giselle, they told us, had been students together from 1984 through 1987 at the University of New Hampshire's Equine Science Program. Giselle subsequently earned a master's in education from Lesley College and has since been teaching; now (when she's not at the farm) she teaches math at Rye, N.H., Elementary School. Carol reported that, after UNH, she "did a lot of PR. and marketing stuff," and has become, in addition to a riding instructor, an artist and a juried member of the New Hampshire Art Association who produces figurative sculpture and practices plein air painting.
She's also a mom. With her on that rainy day for the ride on the beach were Geordie Whitson, 11, and Marika Whitson, 14, and another youthful farm participant, Taylor Driscoll, 16.
The Educational Farm, Carol told us, is on the Web at - where else? - www.theeducationalfarm.org.
We went back out into the rain that day with a plan to visit that site - and to return another day to Maude Hutchins for that talk with Lucy and Kent.
Stay tuned.
