I wanted to share this wonderful letter and some photos that were sent to me. Enjoy!

From the desk of Judy Von Feldt of Dover. Visit her blog as well – https://newenglandgardenandthread.wordpress.com/

When I read your Landaff Ledger, I am full of wonderful memories including years of spending school holidays and summer vacations with my Grandparents, Earl and Bertha Sweet, on Brookside Farm.

You may be thinking you don’t know where Brookside Farm is, well, you probably know it today as Doug and Deb Erb’s home.

Spending a large part of my youth in Landaff, I was busy with cows, chickens, barn cats, and an assortment of other farm animals including the occasional piglet, duck or rabbit. As I got older, I learned to not ask exactly where the meat for dinner came from.

There were hours spent on the glider shucking corn, shelling peas, snapping beans, or hulling strawberries. Riding my bike up to the Blue School and back and swimming in the brook with Roger and Sylvia O’Dell and a few other names that I can’t remember, kept me entertained between chores.

There were also delightful afternoons when I rode my bike up past Erb’s to the Goodwin Tyler farm and enjoyed several games of rummy, delicious chocolate chip cookies, and home-made root beer with my Grandmother’s two friends, Katy Goodwin and Maxine Tyler.

There were wonderful Old Home Day celebrations including the parade, delicious food, and the flower show where my Grandmother always earned ribbons. The events and dinners sponsored by the Grange, including my Grandparents’ 50^th Anniversary celebration, were always something to anticipate.

I remember going to the pasture and bringing the cows home late afternoons, looking for broken fence, pitching hay which was definitely not my favorite chore, berry picking, and going along to mow the grass at a couple of cemeteries where relatives were buried. Today, my Grandparents, Mother, Aunts, and Uncles including a memorial to my two Uncles, John and Allen, killed in WWII, are buried in the Landaff cemetery alongside many of their friends.

As I write this, names come to mind like Goudie, Erb, O’Dell, Tyler, Goodwin, Clough, Robinson, Titus, Clement, Snell, Chandler, Bishop, Curran, Dodge, Landry, Longchamp, Pillsbury – so many.

I am now my Grandmother’s age, and Dover is home to my husband and I, our daughter, son-in-law and two teenage grandchildren. I like to quilt in the winter and garden with the Strafford County Master Gardeners in the summer.

Life in Landaff was something truly special, and to this day, these memories warm my heart and soul when the Landaff Ledger arrives in my email.