Sheldon-Owens Farm

Sheldon-Owens Farm occupies about 251 acres in the southeast corner of Willsboro, Essex County, New York. Joseph Sheldon bought the first lot in 1784, and the farm grew through the nineteenth century before the Owens family acquired it in 1903 and expanded it again. Buildings cluster along Route 22, including an English-type barn from the late eighteenth century, later barns, a granary, a brick smokehouse, a sugar house, a well house with a windmill, and a farmhouse built about 1855 and remodeled around 1910-20. Behind them lie crop fields, pastures, a cow lane, a mature apple orchard and a woodlot, an arrangement that follows the New England four-field system. Dairy products, wool and apples remained staples of the farm economy into the mid-twentieth century. The farm is notable for the continuity of its layout and the survival of its buildings and landscape across more than two centuries, with little major change between 1950 and 1985.