Tranquility Ridge Farm has been ours since 2015. The farmstead dates back, however, to between 1850 and 1860. The farm was settled by Joachim Nordblum, an immigrant from Mecklenburg in northeastern Germany. It remained in the Nordblum family until relatively recently, although portions of the original farmstead have been separated from the property over the years.
The farm house was built in three stages, and was in essentially its present exterior configuration by the early 1880s. When we purchased it, it was minus its front porch. We replaced that missing element soon after we moved in.
Of the three outbuildings on the property, the most important to us is the 30’x60′ barn. That should be no surprise, as our farm is home to our seven equines: horses Firsty, Cooper, Sabre, Dori, Dilly and Cory, and miniature pony Blossom. It now is configured with seven horse stalls, a tack room, and has dedicated bedding, hay and feed areas. The mow is more than sufficient to hold the hay required to support that number of stalls. The oldest portion of the barn appears to have been built about the same time as the farmhouse. It once was open up to the roof, with central American Chestnut support posts. All of the timbers are hand adzed. The other segment of the structure is not quite as old, the timbers being sawn. Likely around 1900 the two story stable which had been situated between the house and the hay barn was moved and combined to the original barn structure. A loft was constructed in the hay barn portion, matching the floor level of the former stable. The old central posts were removed, and the combined building was made into a center aisle dairy barn, with concrete floor and (now removed) stanchions. The former center posts became supporting beams, atop sturdy steel columns. A pair of silos, no longer extant, were at the northeast corner.
The other outbuildings are a garage structure which may have been used at some point as the farm’s blacksmith shop, and a two story structure (which quite evidently has been relocated from its original siting) which is now used as a workshop. For exercising and training the horses we have a 60′ sand roundpen. We have added a small tractor shed, and run-in shelters in the side and rear paddocks. Blossom, who is turned out in the roundpen so she doesn’t harm herself eating too much rich grass, has her own miniature run-in.
A branch of slow moving Muddy Creek flows west from just to the north of the present property line. Its ravine was once part of the farmstead, and an old apple orchard appears to have been planted to make use of the steep creek banks. At the rear of the property lies the abandoned right of way of the old “Sunshine Line” Buffalo to Erie interurban railway, and the active Conrail and Norfolk Southern rights of way are just a bit further east.
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