Middleburg Palatine House

Adjacent to the LaRue barn you will find another timber-framed building that is actually an early American house. It was built about 1750 in the Schoharie Valley of New York state. This building was built in two stages, and it is the left half that is the original old house. It measures twenty feet by twenty feet and was moved at some time in its history to the site where we found it, on a hillside above the Schoharie Creek. This small house was most likely built by a group of German settlers who were brought to the English colony of New York by the British government for the purpose of making naval stores from the sap of the eastern white pine trees. Naval stores like turpentine, varnish and tar were essential to the Royal Navy in the days of wooden ships. This experiment failed when the local eastern white pine trees failed to produce a suitable sap. The Palatine Germans were then released from their obligations to make naval stores for the Royal Navy and settled throughout the Hudson, Mohawk and Schoharie Valleys.

The Homestead Farm & Garden Center

The Middleburg Palatine House is now home to our Homestead Farm & Garden Center. The store sells  a wide variety of organic and natural gardening supplies and tools and serves as classsroom space for homesteading and agricultural skills seminars.