Each week, writer Larissa Phillips, transplant from Brooklyn, brings you tales of life upstate. This week: what it’s like to commute from bucolic Greene County back into New York City.

Most of my week is filled with bucolic, 19th century-ish, Little-House-on-the-Prairie-style tasks.  I garden, I knit, I shovel poop, I fix fences, I homeschool the young-uns.

Then, once a week, I am jerked awake by the dismaying sound of a 6 am alarm, and I head off to my two-day work week in the city. Imagine the sounds of steel brakes screeching on metal, like a locomotive jerking to a halt. Reality check! Back to the city, back to work, back to reality. Oh god.

Goodbye, sleeping children. Please don’t wrap your sleeping arms around my neck and beg me not to go. It’s already hard enough. Goodbye, ponies who whinny at me as I walk to the truck, hoping I’ll come back and feed them some hay. Nice try, though. I appreciate your optimism, almost 90 minutes before your usual breakfast. Goodbye, early sunrise pressing past navy ropy clouds and illuminating the sprawl of farmscape as I crest the hill just after Jane’s horse pasture on County Route 26. That pretty row of trees. Goodbye, sparrows playing and mating in the blossoming cherry trees as I climb onto the train in Hudson. So long, complicated Norwegian-style mittens I am more than half-way finished with, and accidentally forgot to bring.

Hello, rheumy-eyed, leather-faced woman next to me on the F train, who can’t stop explosively gargle-coughing into a sodden tissue in the seat next to me. Do you have infectious tuberculosis, or did you just chain smoke your way through a bad case of bronchitis? Either way, you are 18 inches from my face with your spastic, retching lungs. All the way from Broadway-Lafayette in Manhattan to 9th Street in Brooklyn. OH MY GOD. Have you considered quitting smoking? (more…)

Flickr/dave_mcmt

As we wrote about earlier this month, the beautiful and forlorn town of Coxsackie has hit upon hard times, marred as it is by it’s name, the prison (albeit one that provides most of its jobs), and its connection to a very unpleasant virus. It’s yearning for new businesses, so local folks are pleased that a new restaurant will soon be opening its doors near town (after jumping a few more logistical hurdles, that is).

That it’s a McDonald’s doesn’t make all residents happy — a few would like to see a cafe stocked with ingredients from the many nearby farms — but it’s a start, and enough of a news item that several local papers wrote it up. It’ll take up residence adjacent to a Dunkin’ Donuts and next to a Dollar Tree. Not exactly the revival of downtown that Upstaters are hoping for, but, heck, it’s a start.

For years we lived the good life of the lowly-taxed in Park Slope. I’ll never understand why we paid a fifth of the taxes we pay upstate, for a Brooklyn property that was worth three times the one we have up here. Brownstoners, enjoy it while you’ve got it.

Upstate, it’s another story. It’s as bad as Montclair up here, at least if you have land.  High taxes are the main reason we gave up our original fantasy of 30 or 40 acres of sprawling woods, and a major reason we came over to Greene County. $20K in taxes every year? No, thanks.

But we still wanted to figure out a way to have our lean little acreage pay for itself. There is the farming exemption (wherein if you make $10,000 in farm-related sales, your property is taxed at a much lower agricultural rate, rather than at a market rate), but that seemed ambitious to us, unambitious gentlemen farmers that we hoped to be.

So we stuck with a familiar formula: the tenant. We did this in Park Slope, with our third-floor tenant paying almost the entirety of our mortgage. Couldn’t we go the same route upstate, just to cover our taxes?

Yes, we thought could, because we found a property that had an annexed barn apartment, which we renovated, and then sought to rent out.

We already knew we wanted to offer the rental as a farm stay. I’d been reading about farm stays for years. A friend in Delaware County (another Brooklyn transplant) is neighbors with this nice farming family, who offer a high end farm stay through a program called Featherdown. (more…)

There isn’t a lot to choose from under the hundred thousand dollar mark in Upstater’s featured town of the week, Coxsackie – but the handful of entries are intriguing (with $150k as the top end the possibilities open up a lot).  Reading Kandy’s mournful/hopeful article I find myself rooting for this burg – maybe it’s riverfront locale, or the underdog moxie it gets from its unfortunate name (as a high schooler in Albany I took endless juvenile glee hearing the radio announce snow days in “Cock Sack-y Athens”).

In any event, there are a couple of interesting possibilities for bargain hunters:

First up, a “quaint village farmhouse” (according to the listing) with loads of potential.  Apparently renovations are underway but need to be completed, including a “new heating system.”  Still, there’s a lot to work with here, including a new-ish looking kitchen and wide plank rustic floors.

It’s closer to the high school than the prison (boy, must Coxsackie residents be sick of hearing about the prison and the virus), and Google Street View shows a nice looking bunch of neighboring houses.  For just $75,000, with the convenience of an in-town location (if that’s what you’re after), this super-historical (18th Century!) 4BR/1.5 BA charmer might be worth a look.

11 Lafayette Avenue (Four Seasons Realty) GMAP
Price: $75,000
Beds: 4
Baths: 1.5
Square Feet: 1,700
Year Built: 1783 (!!)
Taxes: $4,400 (2010)
Acreage: 0.16

This all-potential farmhouse with land (1.6 acres) is a mile or so south of town, 1,000 feet from the river and adjacent to Four Mile Point Park.

It’s been gutted and that’s where work stopped.  Whether the price of $80,000 leaves enough room for the necessary work is up to you.  “But where would I live while I fix it up?” you ask.  I’m glad you asked:

Convenience!  Then again, I like trailers.

69 4 Mile Point Road (Weichert) GMAP
Price: $80,000
Taxes: “$361″ (a month?)
Year Built: 1920
Acreage: 1.60

This one is just land, but it’s a decent amount of it:

On the West side of the Thruway from Coxsackie proper (just a mile south of Climax!) is this long, skinny wooded plot.  According to the photos on site, its only inhabitant is one particularly photogenic deer.

8+ acres for $55,000 is a pretty decent deal, all things considered. Might be far enough out of town that you could park a trailer (vintage Airstream, anybody?) and hope not to get in dutch with the local authorities.

High Hill Road (Premier Realty) GMAP
Price: $55,000
Acreage: 8.41

I’ve broken with this column’s usual “Price: High to Low” sorting to save 149 South River Street for last:

This oddball loft/cabin/greenhouse/hillside aerie calls itself an “Artist Haven” and features one bedroom and “1 1/4 baths.”  What, exactly, constitutes a 1/4 bath?  A sink, in a closet, that you can pee in?

Interior design is chipboard-chic and the owners have made no effort to hide their hoarder-in-training leanings (a blanket! on a camp chair! next to a barbecue! why not!), but it all looks like it could be cozy and cabin-y after some severe de-cluttering.

The pictures, though, seriously bury the lede.  This unassuming little property sits on a slight rise DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM THE THE HUDSON RIVER.  Hint to the sellers: rather than cameraphone pictures of a rummage sale interior, how about something like this:

There.  Fixed that for you.

149 South River Street (via Zillow) GMAP
Price: $85,000
Bedrooms: 1 loft
Bathrooms: 1.25 (?!)
Square feet: 840
Acreage: .50
Taxes: $648, quoth Zillow, which can’t possibly be right, can it?
Features: The Hudson River!

It had been a while since I’d seen Coxsackie, a few years at least. And even then, it was sort of a drive-by visit with few stops to actually take a look at what I was driving through. I remember thinking it was pretty, as is most of these rural communities in Greene County, and I assumed that because it was a village on the Hudson River, it would have a thriving, walkable waterfront vibe.

Turns out, I was only half right.

I returned to the village of Coxsackie last Sunday to get a closer look, because as I sat at home and researched the area, something seemed…off. On the surface, it seemed exactly what I’ve described above. Riverside Park is gorgeous. The waterfront properties are handsome and many have been restored. The Reed Street historic district is on the National Registry of Historic Places.

In general, I’ve discovered that research of other riverfront towns, like Hudson (Columbia County) or Catskill (Green County) , reveal a thriving cultural community with events planned and restaurants touted and the charms of local shops discussed at length. But this wasn’t happening with Coxsackie. While the photos on the village’s website are indeed quite breathtaking, the village itself seemed oddly silent.

As I wandered the streets of Coxsackie, noting the spectacular architecture surrounding me, I couldn’t help by ask myself the same question over and over again: What’s going on here? Why is it so deserted? Is it because it’s a Sunday, and everything is closed? Is it because it’s winter? Is it hopping in the summer? I would’ve asked a local, but the only person I saw over the course of about an hour of exploration was a very chilly looking blind gentleman with a cane and assistance dog.

So the questions remained, even as I sat yet again in front of my home computer. Is it the Coxsackie Correctional Facility? Is it the virus of the same name? Is it that Athens and Hudson, more active villages on the waterfront, are too close (one Upstater commenter speculated this might be the case)? Maybe it’s just that the right investor(s) hasn’t arrived on the scene yet?

Ultimately, however, as I looked through my batch of photos taken during Sunday’s investigation, I stopped asking the questions and instead chose to focus on the potential of the area, its charm, its historical and architectural significance. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I sense that Coxsackie is due for an uptick in fortunes, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

We admit, we were fooled by this Victorian farmhouse. From a distance, it looks like the Real Deal. However, in reality, this house is relatively new, built in 1997. Regardless, it’s a nice house, and it’s got a lot going for it, especially on the outside: It’s on three very bucolic acres, there’s a backyard gazebo, and an it’s got an inviting in-ground swimming pool.

Not that we have a beef with the inside. Although, as we mentioned in the Second Empire Victorian post from yesterday, we have a slight aversion to floral wallpaper. Maybe it’s a personal preference. So we turn to you, the Upstater audience, with this completely Earth-shattering, potentially game-changing, controversial question: What are your thoughts on floral wallpaper?

Okay, okay. Enough about the wallpaper. Let’s talk about the location. It’s not in the village of Coxsackie but about five miles to the west of it. It’s a rural landscape on Route 51, and the house is surrounded by farm land. And for those interested, it’s about five miles away from the Correctional Facility.

All in all, it’s a pretty property surrounded by lovely views of the Catskill and Berkshire Mountains on the outside and nice features on the inside, including a smart kitchen, claw foot tub in the master bath, big windows in the living spaces, French doors, hardwood floors, and a finished basement.

247 Route 51, Coxsackie (Heartland Realty) GMAP
Asking Price: $349,000
Beds: 4
Baths: 2.5
Square Feet: 2,102
Year Built: 1997
Land: 3 acres
Taxes: $6,562
Features: In-ground pool, gazebo

Upstater is thrilled to announce the debut here of writer Larissa Phillips. She’s an ex-Brooklynite who escaped city life for a farm in Greene County. Each week, she’ll offer us some insider knowledge about living upstate, from the best spots for produce to how to manage a vacation rental. This week: how and why she traded a brownstone for a farm house.

Before we moved upstate, I was an unofficial cheerleader for life in Brooklyn. Diversity! Culture! Community! Prospect Park!

It seemed like the best place in the world to live and raise a family, especially for a suburban refugee like myself.  We would probably still be schlepping around Park Slope if I hadn’t slowly, over the course of several years, become completely and utterly obsessed with the idea of living on a farm.  I tried to soothe the obsession within city limits. We had backyard chickens, we planted a fig tree and raspberry bushes. I worked on school gardens. Nothing helped. It just got worse. By the end of our time in the city I was suffering from a serious case of what I think of as a farm fugue.

To enter a farm fugue, in which the victim wanders for hours, days or years seeing nothing but heirloom chickens and Berkshire spotted pigs and compost bins (and obsessively searching upstate real estate sites), consider taking the following steps:

1. Start with a membership at the Park Slope Food Coop, or at least become a regular at the farmers market.
2. Read farmy lit by the likes of Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver and Kristen Kimball.
3. Try to garden in your tiny row house backyard, despite the towering oak trees that block the sunlight for all but two hours every day. Be almost completely unsuccessful, but put pictures up on your blog and Facebook of the small handful of produce you reap here and there.
4. Feel increasingly uneasy about your children’s bedroom consisting of a 60-square foot allotment in the corner of your home office.
5. Begin taking the hunt for parking spaces personally.
6. One day, visit a farm way out in the country, where chickens roost in the trees, and heirloom sheep graze in a vast meadow with beehives on the far side. Feel already a little rattled, when you round the corner and see the horses. Horses. Feel a long-buried equine passion begin to force its way, like a little sprout seeking the light, up through the concrete bunker you poured over it back when you were 13.
7. Spend the next several days somewhat psychotically pricing horses and farms on the Internet.
8. Spend the next three years slowly convincing your partner to leave the city.

After many years of discussion, we finally moved upstate almost two years ago. We started out by renting a house in Columbia County, while we sold our Park Slope house and hunted for a farmstead.

Our needs: a farm house of 2000 square feet or so (With a dining room! And a linen closet! And a bedroom for each child!), barns or outbuildings, on at least 10 acres. If we could have woods, pasture and water, we’d be very happy. If it could be horse-friendly, my life could become complete. Since we would still work part-time in the city, we needed to be within a half hour of the Hudson Amtrak station. We quickly realized that if we went over to the wilds of Greene County we could actually afford what we wanted.

And, on a brutally hot July day in 2010, we found everything we’d hoped for:  a 15-acre property with a farm house, a crumbling hay barn and a two-bedroom apartment in a converted barn. A stable, a riding ring and pasture completed the package. We just had to add horses, which we quickly did.

Of course we didn’t find out until later that there were some things we should have wanted, and other things we might have not wanted…  but that came later.

We four — me, my New Farmer husband Chris, our 12-year old son Ernie and our 8-year old daughter Megan — now live the life of upstate farmers. We homeschool our kids, we garden, and we have a self-sustaining chicken flock. (And, yes, we eat our chickens.) (And, yes, our kids are okay with it.) (Mostly.) Our goats will give birth in May, and we have new chicks in the brooder. The hoop house goes up next weekend. And the ponies are doing their thing, burning hay, being cute, giving rides.

Our iPhones and Brooklyn Industries accessories might give us away to the savvy Park Sloper, but, really, I think we’re blending, people, I really do.

We feel like this house could’ve come right out of The Secret Garden, minus the Cockney gardener and the cholera. Starting right from the ivy-lined brick entry with the wrought iron gate, this house is a beautiful, elegant throw-back, complete with little nooks and crannies to explore on the 3.5-acres upon which it graciously sits. Looks like a nice place to go for a bit of a ramble, don’t you think?

The inside is, you guessed it, quite stunning, too, although we’re not huge fans of the wallpaper in the stairway and the dining room. But that’s flagrant nit-pickery. This house is gorgeous, huge and a straight-up bargain at less than $600,000, especially since the buyer is also getting a separate studio building, a guest house (unfinished), and a detached two-car garage.

Coxsackie is rife with great houses like this one, many you can get for around $100 a square foot. Not sure if that’s a bargain? We looked at a couple of similar properties in Rhinebeck, for example, and they went for around a million. Taxes are a bit on the high side for this property compared most others we looked at in Coxsackie, it’s still worth a look.

(Oh, and just in case you’re bored with rambling around the grounds in your pantaloons, there is a basketball court upon which to get your game.)

49 Lafayette Avenue, Coxsackie (Heartland Realty) GMAP
Asking Price: $599,000
Beds: 7
Baths: 3
Square Feet: 4,654
Year Built: 1900
Land: 3.5 acres
Taxes: $11,160
Features: Gourmet kitchen, copper gutters, guest house, studio

We whizzed past this house just the other day during a whirl-wind tour of the Coxsackie area, which provided a level of vetting that we don’t always get here at Upstater. It was an eye-opening experience that should stand as a reminder that a reality check on these houses is sometimes in order.

With that said, we really liked the neighborhood in which this house is situated, and the house looked great, too. As we mentioned in our Town of the Week write-up on Coxsackie, the village is strange, beautiful and seemed bafflingly deserted. But the neighborhoods are filled with a fascinating array great houses. Some of them ornate bordering on opulent (we’re writing about a stunning second empire Victorian tomorrow! Stay tuned!), some of them are ramshackle, and some of them are like this cottage: Cute, well-maintained and ridiculously affordable.

The roof has been replaced within the past 3 years, the kitchen has been renovated (see above) and it’s just a few minutes’ walk to the water front and the public library. The stone retaining wall in the yard makes a nice outdoor detail.

The Coxsackie-Athens High school is a half-mile away, which is great if you’ve got school-age kids. They can join the ranks of other undoubtedly bored teenagers who reside in Coxsackie, where there’s nothing to do but look at cool buildings and go to the water front park. Kids these days; they just don’t appreciate fabulous upstate New York architecture like they use to.

91 New Street, Coxsackie (Keller Williams) GMAP
Asking Price: $155,000
Beds: 3
Baths: 2
Square Feet: 1416
Year Built: 1900
Land: .12 acres
Taxes: $3,495
Features: Restored hard wood floors

This is the kind of place we always hope to find whenever we start poking around an old upstate town. Built in 1720 by town founder Pieter Bronck’s family (Bronck as in “Bronx,” which may sound familiar), this Dutch stone house on five acres is breathtakingly restored on the inside, keeping elements of the time period and intermingling them with modern touches.

The fact that a place like this exists for less than a half-million is kind of miraculous, but that’s the nature of Coxsackie. Stunning architecture is everywhere, and living in a piece of history is within completely within reach price-wise. Bronck Mill Road is a beautiful country road just a few miles outside of the village of Coxsackie. Upstate New York’s oldest surviving house, the Bronck Museum and Farmstead, is right down the road.

Property includes an outdoor wood-burning furnace, which could help lower heating costs during the winter. Creek front property right across the road is also for sale, in case the buyer is looking to expand. Additional drool-inducing photos exist here.

424 Bronck Mill Road, Coxsackie (Gary DiMauro Real Estate, Inc) GMAP
Asking Price: $349,000
Beds: 3
Baths: 3
Square Feet: 2,300
Year Built: 1720
Land: 5 acres
Taxes: $6,777
Features: Historic Dutch architecture, 3 fire places