Posted on 10/26/2006 5:52:29 PM PDT by Coleus
Enos "Cy" Harker, cantankerous holdout and local legend, lived alone in a 200-year-old stone farmhouse perched on 150 hilly acres in the state's northwest corner. As the final farmer clinging to his original land in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, he was feisty enough to fight the government long after the Tocks Island Dam project had vanquished most locals. Even as he approached his 90s, he refused to sell his section of historic Old Mine Road in Sandyston, Sussex County, to the park service, friends and family said.
He was still brawny enough to carry five-gallon barrels full of logs to his home, which had only a wood stove for heat. And he was still plucky enough to cut his own fields after more than six decades. But on Thursday, Harker's orange Allis Chalmers tractor flipped over on a hillside, the antique vehicle landing belly up on top of him, State Police and friends said yesterday.
The smell of fresh-cut hay re mained in the air where his body was found, friends said. Harker was 93. "He was a rough old cob, I'll tell you," said Steve Williamson, a fel low area farmer whose deceased father, C.W. Williamson, was a good friend of Harker's. "He was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do."
Harker's niece Jody Clark said, "The land meant everything to him," and he pledged never to yield his farm to the government. "He had taken it from a run- down place to what it was," she said at the two-story farmhouse, its lawn neatly trimmed, its outbuild ings still solid. "He devoted his whole life to keeping this place up." Park Superintendent John Do nahue, who did not know Harker personally
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
5 gallon barrels? That's not a lot of logs.
that's true American spirit.
I have a hunch that he would rather have gone out like this.
We need more men like this in our country.
It is if you're 93.
God bless him. May he rest in peace.
He's blessed that he even knows what he's doing, let alone toting anything other than a walker, at 93...
Ditto.
It is for a 93 year old man.
Yep, that will definately do a person in. Sympathies for the old farmer's family.
five-gallon barrels full of logs to his home
I think we have a reporter here that doesn't understand the local language. Reminds me of a speech in Toastmasters where a guy from South America talked about his mother-in- law having an operation for kidney rocks.
He probably was not on any. Not all old people are. The healthy ones are usually on nothing. I have a few patients like this. I only see them if they get cut or something like that. I do not even try to give them the BS of quit smoking, have your cholesterol checked and Oh by the way you need to flu shot. They will always say NO. They are set in their ways and for them it has apparently worked well.
I think the farm should become a private memorial to the independent spirt of the Amercian person it is dying and needs memorialized. It could remain as a big middle finger to the .gov.
But it says barrels, I wonder how many he carried at once ?
What will happen to the property now that Harker isn't there to continue the fight. Will the gubermint win in the end? Here's hoping NO!
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