Archive: Around Town

The dining room at Woodsedge was jammed Sunday as the Benson clan gathered to celebrate Clarence Benson's 90th birthday.  Close family and extended family filled the room as they helped Benson celebrate with ice cream and a cake made to look like the family farm.  Unlike the real farm, which grew from just over 200 acres 60 years ago to about 1,000 acres today, the acreage on the cake diminished quickly as the afternoon progressed.  "I married a farmer," said Benson's wife Mary.  "I assumed I'd be a farmer's wife, and that's what I've been for 63 years."


Benson was born in Groton near the Lansing town line.  He and Mary went to neighboring churches.  "My first memory of him is at vacation Bible school in East Lansing," Mary recalls.  "The courtship was five years at least.  I was in college and he courted me in college.  Then I taught school for two years.  Then we got married."

The couple began share cropping in Lansing on a farm owned by Clarence's Aunt Hattie, but they dreamed of having their own farm.  Eldest son Chuck says he has a collection of his mother's old Christmas letters.  "One of them was from the year that they bought that farm," he recalls.  "She was pregnant with me at the time.  They were share cropping a farm for an aunt of my father's.  She talked about moving on to a farm.  My mother talked about being on a place of their own and starting a family.  Me."


They bought about 200 acres in Lansingville from the Coon family in 1946, and with a wedding present of a team of horses and a few cows they began dairy farming.  "When we moved to Lansingville Road there was just one inhabitant," Clarence recalls.  "He had an old hog house."  But Benson chose dairy farming because he felt there was more money in it.  He and Mary had two sons and three daughters, Chuck, Marjorie, Joh, Lainie, and Fay.  All but Joh, who is teaching in Haiti, were at the party to celebrate.

Over the years Clarence added more land, and eventually Chuck joined him on the farm.  "I wasn't planning on going back to the farm," Chuck says.  "I had a Cornell education.  That's pretty hard work.  Then my wife and I were in the Peace Corps in South America for two years, right after we graduated from college.  While we were down there I had an extension type job, working with farmers.  I came around to thinking that that's what I wanted to do."


Father and son both say they enjoyed farming together.  "It worked out well," Chuck says.  "He was very receptive to my ideas, and I didn't feel held back at all.  I was happy with that, and I'm glad we were able to do it as long as we did.  Eventually they formed a partnership until Chuck bought the farm from his father around 1978.  Clarence's other son also has a farm in Groton.

Chuck continued to buy land until Bensvue Farm grew to 1,000 acres.  Today the farm has about 300 milking cows and nearly 600 animals altogether including young stock.  They grow food for the cows.  "There are a lot of crops involved, but it's all eaten by the cows," Chuck explains.  "It is strictly a dairy farm, but there is quite a cropping operation that goes with it."  Pastures are located ideally near the barns, and the family is in the process of being certified as producers of organic milk.  Chuck says they will be selling organic milk by this May.


Now a third generation of Bensons will begin farming Bensvue Farm when Chuck's son Chandler joins his father there.  Currently an actuary for Nationwide Insurance, he will move to the farm once he sells his Cleveland house.  In October the farm qualified to recieve $1.1 million from the New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets.  The money is used by the Farmland Protection Program to buy development rights from farmers to preserve New York farm land and keep family farms running.  Chuck and Andra have built a home on the property to retire to, making room in the farm house for Chandler's family.

The family has grown considerably, and there was only room for close family and extended family in Woodsedge's dining hall.  Clarence was decked out in a party hat, Chuck played banjo, and family stories dominated the conversation.  Clarence was happy to have his family around him, joking that his goal for the party was "Getting through this!"


Mary says she is happy that her family wants to continue their farming heritage.  "I'm pleased, of course, that they want to do it, that they do it by choice," she says.  "It's a good life, but it can be a hard life at times.  But it's a good way to bring up a family, it's a good place.  We had a great life.  I was born in Lansing.  I've always lived in Lansing so it's home to me and I never chose to leave."

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