On a winding road in Pine Plains, leading up to a sweeping view of Stissing Mountain, a couple has steadfastly worked to return a sense of history to their house not on a hill.
“For the last two years, we’ve been taking out all the invasives and creating space for the native species” begins Joan Redmond, as we zip up the hill with spectacular views of Stissing Mountain in her Polaris EV. She points out various sycamores, viburnum and even an old pear tree orchard on my tour. “All of this milkweed is great for the monarchs,” she continues, as the Polaris climbs up to the top of the property she owns with her partner, Susan Crossley.
Joan and Susan purchased their late 1700’s home with a cottage and the surrounding two acres back in 1990. “It was a real wreck,” says Susan, as we sit together on their porch on a recent summer afternoon. Crime in Philadelphia, where the couple lived and worked, became unbearable and the two decided to make a move to the country. While both previously visited Pine Plains, finding the house was a fluke. Luckily, the duo worked in restoring old houses, and diligently went about reclaiming the house and gardens, where Susan now plants and harvests the fruits and vegetables, including the original rhubarb garden, peach trees, blueberries, apples, cherries and much more. In 1994, when Susan’s mother could no longer live alone, the couple then fixed up the cottage for her. “What started as a five-year project became a 10-year project, then a 20-year project. Now that it’s been 30 years, we have to start all over again,” jests Susan.
Across the road, Willi and Anne-Marie Kunz owned about 20 acres of land. The Swiss couple used their hilltop property to camp and never built a house on the site, preferring at first only a wooden platform and eventually a very simple structure for shelter. Over the years, Joan and Susan approached their neighbors about purchasing the land, but the Kunzes were never quite ready to sell. “Every time they would come up, they would fall in love with it all over again,” explains Joan.
Joan and Susan opened a real estate office in Pine Plains in 1997 and operated Crossley Redmond Realty until eventually retiring in 2017. When Joan isn’t working on the property and Susan isn’t tending to the gardens, the couple takes full advantage of local cultural events, including theater and concerts, and they both became involved in town issues. Joan served as the Chair for the Conservation Advisory Committee in Pine Plains and spearheaded the designation of the area around Stissing Lake as a Critical Environmental Area. Susan was on the Steering Committee for Pine Plains United, a local “smart growth” organization. “We are thrilled to do our little part for preservation, both the houses and the land,” says Joan.
Then about four years ago, the Kunzes finally did call. They had been approached by a few people about selling the property and Joan and Susan quickly worked to buy and protect the land. First, they took the four tax parcels and combined them into a single one. They knew a few of the surrounding farms were already protected with easements held by the DLC, including Dutchess Views Farm, a horse farm that directly abuts the land. Working with a local farmer, Joan and Susan set up two large fields for haying which will be kept in agriculture. The remaining land, not suitable for farming, will be kept mostly wild and add more contiguous protected acreage for local wildlife including birds, deer, bear, bobcat, coyote and countless other species native to the area. “The Kunzes were thrilled that no one will ever build a house on the hill,” says Joan. While Joan and Susan estimate that the original homestead was about 100 acres, the duo have certainly done their part to keep a sliver of that history preserved: “There will never be a house on that side of the road.”
