Like nearly everyone who drives Route 31 from the center of Antrim to Route 9, George and Michelle Caughey had always admired Bass Farm.

For decades, the property was meticulously maintained by former owner Herb Nilson, with people in Antrim joking fondly that Nilson maintained the beautiful lawn with scissors. George’s family dates back generations in Antrim, and he lived there as a young child. As he grew up, he visited his father’s family home just a few doors up the road, across the road from the Stone Church. George’s father attended school in the building across the road Bass Farm, which has been repurposed as a home.

For 25 years, George and Michelle returned to Antrim every summer to spend time at the family camp on Gregg Lake. 

“For years we always said, if Bass Farm ever went up for sale, we would want it,” George said while giving a tour of the property. “And then it just fell into our laps.” 

After Herb Nilson died, the Caugheys learned from contacts in town that Bass Farm was going on the market, but with one caveat – the buyer would have to take the farm entirely furnished, including all the furniture, art,  rugs and curtains, along with everything in the storage areas and outbuildings. With no family to take his belongings, Nilson’s wish was that his possessions stay with his beloved home. 

“We inherited literally everything,” Michelle said. “Just boxes and boxes of stuff.” 

“We have all of the previous owner’s paperwork, his ledgers and tax returns, old letters, his whole life,” George said. 

Just recently, Tenney Farm patriarch Erik Tenney came by looking for some antique town fire equipment stored under Bass Farm’s main barn.

“He just wondered if it was still here, and it’s still here,” George said. 

When Bass Farm came up for sale in 2016, the Caugheys, both physicians, were living in California, where they raised their four children. 

“The problem was, we weren’t quite ready to retire and move when the house came on the market,” George said. “But we figured it out.” 

The farm is named after owners from the early 1850s, Eben and Clara Bass, who farmed and provided boarding for summer visitors. At one time, the house had a much larger addition, with room for up to 50 boarders. Summer visitors could walk from the farm to Gregg Lake to the east.

On the front of the house, on one of the two “brick ends,” George pointed out the historic plaque indicating that Bass Farm was Antrim’s first parsonage. The town’s first church, the First Presbyterian Church of Antrim, was built just up the road; and the neighboring house, “The Old Parsonage” (featured in April’s House and Home) became Antrim’s second parsonage. Both houses outlasted the original Presbyterian Church, which was taken down when the congregation moved to Antrim’s mill village in the 1800s. 

Moving into the home, George and Michelle found more evidence of Nilson’s meticulous maintenance.

“There were summer and winter curtains in every room, and absolutely everything was labeled with his name,” Michelle said. 

Both avid gardeners, George and Michelle knew they would have to undo some of the effects of decades of old-school lawn  and property maintenance. 

“The previous owner had used a lot of poison and things like that, which everyone did back then,” George said. “Our goal was bring back the pollinators, to naturalize more of the property, and to have less lawn and let native species come back in.”

The property includes 67 acres, now in conservation easement, which backs up to Gregg Lake and includes a kettle pond and a stream. George and Michelle are actively involved in conservation, most recently taking part in a bat-counting course at NH Audubon to learn how to monitor the property’s active bat population. In recent years,  the Caugheys have seen populations of chimney swifts, barn swallows and tree swallows return to Bass Farm.

In 2020, after they retired and moved to the farm full-time, George and Michelle did significant renovations to the back half of the house, working with architect Charles Michal of Harrisville to create a more-contemporary space within the footprint of the old house. They added a new kitchen addition on the west side, as well as a “grandkids’ loft” overlooking the kitchen. On the south side of the house, adjacent to the front door, the Caugheys transformed a narrow space formerly used for a dining room into a long gallery with a gently curving wall of windows. 

Off the kitchen to the north, a new patio, built with stones pulled from the fields surrounding Bass Farm, overlooks the meadow, which has been allowed to encroach on the former lawns. The meadows are dotted with bird boxes, and Michelle pointed out two rare surviving Baldwin apple trees in the meadow. 

“Nearly all the Baldwins around here were killed in the deep freeze in 1933 and 1934, but we have a few survivors,” Caughey explained. 

Energy efficiency was a priority in renovations. The Caugheys replaced every window in the house with insulated double-pane windows, added insulation from basement to attic and installed solar panels. The basement, which flooded regularly over the centuries, was waterproofed and now contains a playroom.

Looking over the meadow from the patio, George and Michelle pointed out bluebirds darting past the patio.

“This is just our favorite spot in the world,” George said.