Remy Tumin
The original posts and beams from the 1755 house sag with history. Bittersweet clings to the rafters of the 1850 barn. Milking stalls still stand from the 1950s, waiting for the cows to come home.
Tea Lane Farm has been many things in its more than 250-year history — a longtime dairy farm, once a vegetable farm and even host to a Revolutionary War contraband tea operation.
Now, with any luck the old farm off Middle Road in Chilmark will soon get another lease on life with a new tenant farmer.
The Cape and Islands legislative delegation has jumped into the fray surrounding cable television contract talks for the Vineyard. State Sen. Dan Wolf and Rep. Tim Madden are scheduled to meet in Boston with Comcast representatives next week, where they said they will press the cable giant to provide service to Chappaquiddick as part of the upcoming contract.
Seth Rolbein, senior advisor to Senator Wolf, said yesterday that the conflict over whether to provide cable to Chappy represents a much broader issue for the Cape and the Islands.
Prompted by by a 40 per cent drop in ridership and scheduling inconsistencies, beach officials said Tuesday they are considering eliminating the summer bus route connecting Chilmark inns to Lucy Vincent Beach.
Beach superintendent Martina Mastromonaco and beach committee chairman Kristen Maloney said at the Chilmark selectmen’s meeting that last summer’s schedule was the most difficult to manage in recent years.
The West Tisbury selectmen say they will need to call a special town meeting to secure additional funds for the roundabout lawsuit after preliminary attorney fees have quickly drained the town’s legal funds budget.
After seven months of efforts to create a stable future for the Thimble Farm property, the fate of the prime farmland is still in flux, leaving the owner disappointed but not discouraged.
Reached by telephone this week, property owner Eric Grubman said he has not given up on an Island coalition of farmers and conservation agencies formed to explore alternatives for the property, but he’s seen little progress to reassure him there is enough interest from the community to take the farm out of private ownership.
With Edgartown noticeably unrepresented, the Islandwide group responsible for negotiating a new franchise agreement with Comcast turned its attention this week to Vineyard neighborhoods other than Chappaquiddick that lack cable television service. Areas at issue include Indian Hill Road and Seven Gates in West Tisbury, and Quansoo, Middle Line Road and Meeting House Way in Chilmark.