Farthing, Ben, Farm

Built between 1923 and 1941 on a hillside above the Watauga River in the Sugar Grove area of Watauga County, the Farthing farmstead records how a mountain family worked its land. The complex includes a one-and-one-half story frame bungalow begun in 1923 by local builder Charlie Hartley, a large 1935 gambrel-roof barn built into the slope by Ben Farthing and helpers, a two-story root cellar, an outhouse, and a 1941 scale house used to weigh cattle and sheep at fall sales. Its rockwork, including stone walkways, steps and retaining walls, was designed by Ben Farthing and largely carried out by his children in 1939. The nomination treats the farm as a representative and rare survival of self-sufficient livestock farming in the county during the period from 1935 to 1942. The scale house is noted as the only example of its type in Watauga County, and the farm's surviving buildings and landscape are regarded as largely intact despite later division of the house and the loss of several outbuildings.