Pinehurst NC Real Estate Blog

Bless Our Hounds – Februray Issue PineStraw Magazine

admin — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:11:11 +0000

Article from this month’s issue in PineStraw Magazine

The Boyd family began foxhunting in the Sandhills nearly a century ago. Luckily, the tradition endures

By Maureen Clark

When the sound of the hunt horn rings through Weymouth Woods this February, hounds, horses and riders will be gathering to honor the heritage of the Moore County Hounds. Almost a hundred years ago, in 1914, James Boyd began hunt- ing the pinewoods and farmland surrounding his country estate in Southern Pines. The women rode sidesaddle, and the young Boyd was a soldier newly home from service on battlefields of Italy and France. In the years between the two World Wars, foxhunting flourished in the Sandhills. Boyd’s brother Jackson joined him as Joint Master. Together they hunted three times a week, from November through February, for almost 30 years. Nearby hunts in Pinehurst and at Overhills, the Rockefeller compound near Spring Lake, were active. Today, the Moore County Hounds hunt is the oldest registered hunt in North Carolina and the lone local survivor carrying on the Boyd tradition.

The founders of the Moore County Hounds deserve to be credited with the hunt’s longevity. Unlike the Rockefellers, who built an elaborate hunt facility housed in a very private and isolated compound, the Boyds tied their hunt to the community. It was their way of connecting with friends, neighbors and visitors to the Sandhills. Although James Boyd had been introduced to foxhunting in the aristocratic English countryside, he decided to adopt a different tone for Weymouth. His description of a 1916 New Year’s Day hunt captures, with good-hearted wit, the experience of hunting with local farmers.

We laid hounds on and off we went. When we struck the first fence it sounded like the collapse of the Crystal Palace. I looked back, and there was a cloud of smoke and flying timbers. When the air cleared, the fence was gone, but all the field were on the right side and riding to beat hell.

When he wasn’t foxhunting, James Boyd was a promi- nent writer who published a number of well-researched his- torical novels, many set in North Carolina. He was part of Scribner editor William Maxwell Evarts (“Max”) Perkins’ group of writers, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Boyd wrote from a standing desk in the second- floor, paneled library overlooking the kennels. Writing for Southern Pines Magazine in 1924, he addressed the expense of foxhunting, with characteristic humor and honesty.

It would not only be simpler to say that people hunt for fun; that they squander money, catch cold, desert their wives, break their necks, get robbed by dealers, wear tight boots in the cold weather … it would not only be simpler to say this, it would also do more honor to the sport.

Boyd could also touch more seriously on the timeless lure of foxhunting as he did in an introduction to Anthony Trollope’s Hunting Sketches in 1933.

The feel of a horse’s lifting shoulders, the swing of hounds across the grass, the sweep of a hunting country. … These things are among the beauties of this earth; and they are reinforced by a thousand minor joys … by the quality of leather and melton and cord, by soft late-August daybreaks and hard, bright morn- ings of November …

The Boyds’ love of foxhunting was coupled with pragmatism and vision. The family realized early that the future of the sport depended on having enough land on which to hunt. Accordingly, four members of the Boyd family and several friends formed a company that purchased 2,300 acres in Manly several weeks before the crash of the stock market in 1929, says research done by Dominick Pagnotta for the Walthour- Moss Foundation.

And the legacy lived on. In 1942, two years before James Boyd’s death, the hounds were given to Ginnie and Pappy Moss. The Mosses built new kennels on their farm, Mile-A-Way, in Manly, a mile down May Street from Weymouth. Before Pappy Moss died in 1976, the Walthour-Moss Foundation was established, a land trust that has amassed 4,200 acres. Cameron Sadler, great niece of Ginnie Moss (who died six years ago), is now one of the Moore County Hounds’ four Joint Masters, and an heir in spirit to the Boyd legacy.

Cameron, like her great aunt, grew up in Savannah but came to Southern Pines to fox hunt as soon as she and her sister could sit their ponies. While Cameron’s foxhunting began in Moore County, her job with Kraft Foods, currently as regional vice president of sales, has occasioned eleven different moves.

Cameron, who now lives in Southern Pines and com- mutes to Charlotte, took advantage of her relocations to ride with a variety of hunts. The first association was with the Shake Rag hunt in Atlanta. “Aunt Ginnie gave me a horse [named] Remember Page to hunt there,” Cameron recalls. She has gone on to ride, as a guest, with over 50 hunts on the East Coast, across the United States, in Ireland, England, France, New Zealand and Australia. Cameron is married to Lincoln Sadler, a wildlife biologist who works at the Sandhills Gamelands in Hoffman. He is the grandson of Verdie Caddell, a beloved horsewoman who taught several generations of youngsters to ride at her Southern Pines stable. Lincoln has whipped in for the hunt for years.

Like the Boyds, Cameron understands the importance of the Moore County Hounds’ ties to the community. She welcomes opportunities to speak to clubs and civic groups about foxhunt- ing. She is thrilled with the crowds that throng Youngs Road for the annual Blessing of the Hounds. A treasured document in her home is the Declaration of the Town of Southern Pines, signed by Mayor Norris Hodgkins in 1960 citing:
The Hunt has continued for fifty years and during that time brought pleasure and recreation to the many citizens of the Sandhills.

The recent overwhelming turnout of the community to protect the foundation’s land from a N.C. Department of Transportation project speaks to the strength of to the community relations established by the Boyds.

In Cameron’s opinion, the greatest challenge facing hunts across the country is the loss of hunt land. In that regard, the Walthour-Moss Foundation’s 4,200 acres located primarily within the boundaries of Youngs Road and north of Lake Bay Road make Moore County unique on the East Coast. Indeed, the Boyd’s planning in the 1920s was prescient.

Cameron also notes the changes in the riders foxhunting now as opposed to the early fields. “We want to be considerate of who is hunting and find a positive way for people to enjoy rid- ing,” she observes. “There is a wider variety of ability and knowledge now, with some who start riding at 40 or later. Like the Virginia hunts out- side Washington, we have a lot who commute to hunt here.” In the early days, many of the homes around Weymouth had stables. The Campbell House, the home of Jackson Boyd, had a stable, as did Loblolly up the road. Horses were a part of the landscape and many children grew up riding. As late as the 1960s there was a horse stabled next to Southern Pines Elementary School on Massachusetts Avenue.

Like the composition of the riders who fol- low the hounds, the quarry has changed. The native quarry has always been the gray fox, with a smaller population of the larger red fox intro- duced to the Sandhills. According to Cameron, “Coyote is our predominant prey now. In 1940, coyote territory was a slim band of the western United States. Now they are found in every state except Hawaii. They are bigger, faster and more adaptable than foxes.”

Locally, the hunt has responded to the shift by organizing the field accordingly. The first flight follows the faster paced coyote closely. A middle flight maintains the pace and jumps more selectively. The last group, hill toppers, follows without jumping. “They (the coyote) seem to be very game,” Cameron explains. “ I saw one (coyote) sit and wait, unworried, for the hounds to catch up before he took off again.”

The terrain is also altered. When James and Jackson Boyd struck out with hounds, the fields were open, the longleaf stands clear cut, and farmland was plentiful. The brothers could visu- ally locate the pack. Hounds were not threatened by traffic. Today, the trees have grown and the hunting is predominantly “woods” hunting where the voice of the hounds is important, and the so-called “biddability” of the hounds — their obedience to the huntsman’s direction — is desirable.

In a portrait of the pack that hangs in Cameron’s home, painted by the wife of Will Stratton, the Boyds’ huntsman, Cameron points out the mixture of hounds depicted: “There are two Orange County hounds, three English hounds, a crossbred and a Penn Marydel in the pack.” This month, Moore County Hounds’ huntsman David Raley will hunt a pack that is largely Penn Marydel, a long-eared hound known for a strong, braying voice. On February 18th, the Moore County Hounds will come from the kennel at Mile-A-Way, up Sheldon Road, across Youngs Road and up Ridge Street to the north gate of Weymouth. They will meet the field of riders in the large meadow of the Weymouth Woods state park east of the estate. The Friends of Weymouth, Joint Masters Dick Webb, Effie Ellis, Mike Russell, Cameron Sadler and hunt secretary Ginny Thomasson invite the community, in the tradi- tion of the Moore County Hounds, to be a part of honoring the Boyd family and the Southern Pines heritage of foxhunting on grounds of Weymouth beginning at 8:30 a.m. Carriages representing the driving community will join the celebration. The hounds go off at 9 a.m.

Story Of A House – Taste Times Two

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:15:21 +0000

This is a lovely house we sold to Tom and Sally Wood in Old Town Pinehurst. With the help of Michael Lamb the house has new life a world of charm. To read the article in full published in PineStraw Magazine please click on this link:

Taste Times Two – Story of a House

Please find photographs of the house and from the article below. Enjoy!

A Cattle Ranch in the Fall…

admin — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:50:06 +0000

Fall Time & Colors on a goregeous Cattle Ranch….

Please enjoy these photographs and the changing colors of the trees as the cattle graze the farm…..

In the PILOT Today – Great Article! – So Much To Love About Southern Pines

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:22:21 +0000

Maybe it’s the glorious October weather that has blessed us lately. But it feels like time for another “things I love about Southern Pines” column.

So here goes. Things I love about Southern Pines:

The presence everywhere on town streets of quaint, one-of-a-kind, sometimes eccentric old homes, some of which started out a century or more ago as boarding houses or winter homes, but which now offer the exact opposite of a cookie-cutter subdivision look.

The ubiquitous sight of layers of russet pine straw, which softens the landscape — and, at certain times of year when the wind is blowing just so, sometimes bundles itself into weird, moving shapes that make you think there’s a dog in the road ahead.

Speaking of dogs: Taking our aged but still spry Kelci for a nice, long, bracing walk around the perimeter of the lake in Reservoir Park on a picture-perfect Sunday afternoon — and, as usual, stopping to chat with fellow strollers or runners or bicyclists we happen to know.

Venturing into the underbrush along the Reservoir trail to check out the subtle color changes now transforming all those sassafras saplings — which, uniquely among tree species, always display three distinct leaf shapes: one-, two- and three-lobed varieties, all on the same tree.

Dropping by for lunch at the Ice Cream Parlor and, here again, almost always running into someone you know — in addition to amiable young proprietor Anthony Parks.

Taking in a cool, can’t-see-it-anywhere-else movie at the Sunrise Theater downtown — and maybe enjoying a glass of white wine and a candy bar (yes, they go great together) while doing it. For those of us who banded together to rescue the theater all those years ago, just driving by at night and seeing the lights on and realizing that some kind of entertainment is being offered inside is enough to bring a lump to the throat.

Feeling a sweet-scented breeze in my face as I coast my bicycle down the Connecticut Avenue hill, wearing a silly helmet while on the way to work on a Saturday morning.

Being able to leave my office for a head-clearing stroll up to and along Broad Street — perhaps pausing on a bench, as I’m now doing, to whip out a piece of schmaltzy writing on the notes app of my iPhone.

Running into our outgoing (in more ways than one) mayor, Mike Haney — who never, it seems, met a person he didn’t find a way to like. He’ll be a hard man indeed to replace in that position.

Strolling through the Farmers Market in Downtown Park, checking out the peaches and tomatoes and okra and comparing notes with other patrons there while a live and local bluegrass band or solo guitarist plays in the background.

Talking with the wonderfully helpful ladies at the Southern Pines Public Library — who, if they don’t have the bit of information you’re looking for at their fingertips, know where to get their hands on it quick.

Savoring a plate of spicy lasagna at Vito’s, a pancake special at Mac’s, or a Bell Tree Burger with blue cheese sprinkles and a side of whole fried okra pods. (I know I’m leaving out some other cool dining establishments. Forgive me. Maybe next time.)

Hearing (and feeling) the distant, rhythmically throbbing thump-thump-thump of a rock band playing at a wedding party under a tent on the grounds of the Weymouth Center, or at a First Friday evening in the downtown.

Walking along the street near our home and encountering a heartbreakingly graceful and delicate mama white-tailed deer with two half-grown fawns, who curiously regard us with bright eyes and cocked ears for a few seconds before turning and effortlessly vaulting a fence and vanishing on their way to who-knows-what destiny.

Awakening to hear the lonesome, somehow comforting horn blare of a freight train rumbling through town in the middle of the night — or of a passenger train making its 7 a.m. stop at the beautifully restored downtown depot.

Yep, there’s a lot to love about Southern Pines.

Southern Pines | Our State Magazine

admin — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:38:08 +0000

Wonderful article on Southern Pines in this month’s issue of Our State! Please click on the link below to read the article.

Southern Pines | Our State Magazine.

Southern Pines in the Snow…

admin — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:18:08 +0000

We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! Please enjoy some of our pictures of downtown Southern Pines as the snow blanketed our town…

The Reindeer Run

admin — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 20:11:14 +0000

On a chilly December morning what could be more fun than opening the front door and greeting people and dogs of every description imaginable running past your front yard. Over 1,600 men, women, teenagers, youngsters, toddlers, and babies braved the cold with scarves, gloves and Christmas cheer to participate in the annual Reindeer Run. Trotting alongside their masters were Rottweiler’s, dachshunds, Chihuahuas, whippets, many yellow labs and golden retrievers, boxers, mutts and you name it. Among the notable were a large green Will Farrell “Elf”, Santa with a modified stroller/sleigh with baby inside and a team of tutu clad runners. Check out these photos. The most spritely elf of all, working on behalf of the run, cheered the runners through the intersection with high fives and words of encouragement. In the crowd I spotted neighbors Fritz Healy, Kathy Lange and Ran Morrissette (5 or 10K). Andie Rose and her decked out dog rounded the corner with a smile on her face.

http://www.survivalfood.net”>Food

A Best Kept Secret…

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:05:06 +0000

It shouldn’t be surprising, but it seems that people don’t know about Woodlake when they come to Pinehurst for golf and decide to stay. The area has been renowned as a golf mecca attracting world class golf to the sand and the pines for over a hundred years. But nowhere else do you find a third element, water in the form of a 1200 acre lake, enhancing the golf experience. Both courses at Woodlake Country Club, Maples and Palmer designs, weave the links and water together around the shoreline to create an unmatched setting. Twenty minutes closer to Raleigh and Fayetteville, it is easy to slip by the quiet lake on the way to the resort villages of Southern Pines and Pinehurst.

In particularly lovely touch, the Clubhouse at Woodlake is the historic Oates House built in 1700 that once occupied a prominent downtown setting in nearby Fayetteville. The historic restoration welcomes members as the hub of the gated community offering tennis, swimming and dining.

Enjoy the sunset from the dock of 720 Azalea Drive, a waterfront home at Woodlake that is modeled after the Clubhouse at Augusta National. Now you can’t say that no one told you about a best kept secret.

720 Azalea Drive – Vass, NC

Pinehurst Golf and Linksland

admin — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:20:32 +0000

There is a fascinating story in this week’s New Yorker about getting “rid of the lush and plush” on golf courses and going “back to the lyrical imprecision of playing over natural country.” While John McPhee is writing about the British Open, his points relate directly to the effort to get back to the original intent on Pinehurst No. 2. The golf world will get a good look at the results of Ben Crenshaw’s leadership in this trend at the 2014 men’s and women’s Opens to be played in Pinehurst.

Click here:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/09/06/100906fa_fact_mcphee

Please enjoy the view of this initiative from Holly Hill at 250 Midland Road in Pinehurst. The property is available for a ringside seat at the upcoming Opens, overlooking the 5^th Hole tee to green.

The Grateful Gardener – The gardens of 415 Fairway Drive, Southern Pines

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:55:40 +0000

The Grateful Gardener

BY NOAH SALT • PHOTOGRAPHS BY GLENN DICKERSON

Pinehurst Luxury Homes Gardens

415 Fairway Drive, Southern Pines, North Carolina

“I’ll tell you a funny story about my passion for gardening,” says Cathy Smith. “I grew up in Miami where, because of the tropical cli- mate, everything is lush and alive with color. I was always outdoors, and plants always had a special attraction to me. In my 20s, I began potting up interesting plants to grow and give to my friends. I even started a small business making baskets of plants and flowers.
“I was always looking for ways to make things grow. One day, I had this crazy idea to give my Swedish Ivy birth control pills. It’s true. I dropped a pill in the watering can and watered my ivy with it, hoping it might stimulate growth.”
“Did it work?” wonders her garden visitor, admiring the some- what formal lines of her front yard garden where the early blooms in gracefully flowing beds include robust bleeding hearts, columbine and Virginia bluebells — all framed on one side by a new boxwood hedge and on the other by viburnum and hydrangea and an under- story of small flowering spring hardwoods.
“Did it ever,” says Smith with gusto. “Within almost no time, the leaves just tripled.”
Guiding her guest around her remarkable garden on three acres off Fairway Drive in Southern Pines, the garden-mad wife of Southern Pines’ popular Ford dealer smiles at her own unconventional experimentation in the garden — a true sign, many would tell you, of an old gardening soul at both work and play.
“I think of creating a garden as an almost sacred act,” Smith allows. “From my point of view, there’s something deeply spiritual about scratching in the dirt to help some little plant along — allow- ing the Lord’s work on this earth to just shine through. Gardening takes patience to do well. I mean, just look at that Solomon’s Seal —” she breaks off excitedly, heading off into her emerging spring beds to point out a small cluster of new iridescent leaves.
“Here’s a great little plant I’ve probably transplanted six or seven times in my garden, trying to find the perfect spot for it to thrive and grow. And look at it now — it’s really coming into its own.”
Smith’s garden, which islands the handsome brick manor house she shares with three of her eight children, three dogs and her hus- band, Bill, is effectively only a few years along — yet it reflects an attention to detail and touch of whimsy that expresses decades of acquired horticultural knowledge.

Smith’s first Sandhills garden surrounded the cottage she and Bill owned in Pinehurst Village back in the late 1990s. As a result of relocating from the Boone area, where she learned to grow huge vegetables and spectacular perennials in the dark soil and cooler mountain climate, her first task was to come to terms with this area’s heat and sand.
“This is such a challenging climate for a gardener. I had a vegetable garden that eventually became a parking lot,” Smith allows, pointing out that she soon enrolled in Moore County’s Master Gardener program and revised the languishing grounds at the corner of Chinquapin and Magnolia with the help of her friend Benjamin Bessette. After a few years of dedicated work, that garden flour- ished, and Smith routinely left her garden gate standing ajar ala Charleston’s Mrs. Whaley, proverbially inviting all curious garden seekers to poke around.
Emily Whaley, who passed away at her Flat Rock summer home a decade ago, was the celebrated home gardener whose flair for color and zest for creative garden experimentation showed generations of staid Charlestonians there was far more to having a garden than a few flowering azaleas on display. Whaley’s Church Street cottage garden gained worldwide attention through the writing of Rosemary Verey and others, and her own bestselling garden book, Mrs. Whaley’s Charleston Garden, which appeared a year before her death.
“As she knew, “ echoes Smith, “the point of having a gar- den, after all, is to share its beauty with others. That’s just shar- ing God’s glory in nature.”
Her next garden project was on the 20-acre plot she trans- formed in horse country. Her friend Bessette once again helped out. “It was a very different kind of garden, with a pond, a terrace, more of a country landscape rather than a conventional garden.”

Three years ago when the Smiths took possession of the antique brick house on
Fairway Drive, Smith’s first job as mistress of a new garden space — once more with design help from Bessette — was to draw more light into the property. “There were all these great trees and mature indigenous plants around the house, but everything was overgrown and really had to be thinned out and clear so the light and air could get into the garden.”
Today, her gardens are naturally segmented into areas that seem slightly more formal in places and decidedly more relaxed in others. Through a gate and down the steps into a lower backyard space, flowering clematis and sweet-scented shrubs are designed to attract birds in profusion. Whimsically scattered around this garden are dozens of unique bird houses, some of them quite old but nobly still in service. “I love these bird houses. We col- lected them over the years,” explains Smith. “They sort of tell a story of our travels.”As she speaks, perhaps half a dozen cardinals and other songbirds flit from one of the 20 or so feeding stations spread around the premises.
In an adjacent gated area reposes a striking- ly attractive raised-bed vegetable garden laid out in precise geometric patterns and linked by formal gravel footpaths, the clever handi- work of local garden designer Hervé Bernier.
On this cool mid-April day, vigorous broc- coli plants stand in healthy ranks along one bed, and new spinach is growing in vibrant tufts. Young potatoes are already well along, and so are garlic and onions. “Last year we had broccoli until Christmas,” provides Smith, noting that her home veggie garden was so productive she gave away tomatoes and picked cucumbers all summer and still had plenty left to put up in jars and make into veg- etable soup.
“The coming of spring — particularly April and May — put me into motion,” she says, leading the way back up her steps where only a moment ago a pair of hummingbirds paused to explore a vine in bloom. “This place is my sanctuary. I’m so blessed to be able to come out here and get my fingers into the soil. The beauty of it constantly surprises and delights me,” she adds. “And isn’t that what a garden is really meant to do? As with my children, I take such pleasure in seeing this garden grow and bloom and change. I’m forever saying thank you to the Lord for all of this.”
With that grateful coda, Smith picks some- thing for her kitchen and heads back up the steps to her home, leaving her garden gate invitingly ajar. Somewhere, you sense, Emily Whaleyissmiling. PS

May 2009 ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… PineStraw:The Art & Soul of the Sandhills