Halford-Hayner Farmstead

This 80-acre farmstead on Cooksboro Road in Pittstown, Rensselaer County, preserves a house and a group of farm buildings spanning roughly 1800 to the early twentieth century. The one-and-a-half-story frame house, built about 1835-50, has Greek Revival-style trim. The main barn group centers on an early nineteenth-century Dutch-influenced swing beam threshing barn with a hewn frame. A sheep barn, milk house and two-story hen house are attached to it. Nearby are a wagon and tool barn, a hay barn, an ice house, a probable pig house and a concrete block shop garage from about 1915. The land was part of a tract sold by Michael Vandercook the Elder to his son Henry in 1784, and the Hayner family later farmed it for generations. The property was listed for its intact collection of agricultural buildings, which show regional building practices and the adaptation of older structures to changing farm needs, and for its long association with local agriculture. Seven buildings and structures are counted as contributing.