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The property features a distillery, bunkhouse kitchen and bar, tasting room and farm shop.
Harvest Homestead Farm has a long and varied 78-year history.
Part of that past includes uncovering a clandestine distillery on the farm.
It was once owned by retired New York City policeman Patrick Ryan which could explain the avoidance of prison, but after a raid, he reverted the property back to its turkey farm origins, said a release.
The property was purchased by a different owner then turned into an old-age commune, where residents worked to raise corn, cows, pigs, horses and chickens, though that didn't last.
Ownership changed again, this time to a butcher who managed it as a guest house and retreat, and converted one of the buildings into a slaughterhouse, and finally, in 1969, to Janet and Charles Adams, the same “potato harvester” who had worked at the distillery over 30 earlier, the release said.
For 40 more years, the Adams family kept watch over the farm and its buried secrets. Then, in the spring of 2008, Charles’s grandson Alex Adams and close friend Ariel Schlein learned of the passage of the New York farm distillers’ law.
They decided it was time to write another chapter in Dutchess history.
In 2011, after an archeological survey and review, the site was added to the New York State Archaeological Inventory as a “Bootleg Era Bunker Complex”, while the New York State Historic Preservation Office deemed it eligible for inclusion in the State and National Register of Historic places, said the release.
Today, Dutch’s Spirits is building a new distillery in the footprint of the original bunkhouse, reviving the farmland, and restoring the bunkers for a brick house and museum that will help bring this rich history to light.
The distillery, through a farm-to-bottle approach will produce corn and grains in the same property.
Gardens and greenhouses are being built and a 12,000-square-foot barn is nearing completion.
Harvest Homestead Farm is located at 98 Ryan Road, Pine Plains.
For more information and visiting days and hours, call (518) 398-1022.
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