Fifteen years ago, Dan and Suzanne Hauspurg bought Hasbrouck House, the onetime country home of a family who built the first section of the dwelling in 1757, replete with an indoor well room—a convenience not only in inclement weather, but also one which provided protection from Indian attack. Think of the movie Last of the Mohicans, the scene where unexpected visitors to a remote homestead shout their arrival from a distance and are welcomed with loaded ammunition. It’s hard to imagine that happening in Stone Ridge these days. Indeed, visitors to the Hauspurgs’ inn are met with open hospitality, and an invitation to wander the extensive grounds and take their ease in rooms of homey comfort.

The stone structure graces nearly thirty five acres of greenery right in the middle of Stone Ridge. From the road, it looks stately. Up close, it’s an unpretentious step into the past. In addition to a large dining room, the first floor holds two game rooms stocked with various pastimes for guests to enjoy, one furnished with a complete honor bar and a piano. A small kitchen, once a service pantry, is available for the guests’ use. The second floor has another common area for television viewing, reading, and playing billiards. A carriage house, originally built in 1820, had all but collapsed by the time the Hauspurgs purchased the property. It’s now a ground floor office and workshop, with a two bedroom suite with kitchenette above.

Touring the upstairs of the main house, Hauspurg describes the renovation of the eleven small rooms that shared toilet facilities, now opened into one- and two-bedrooms suites with private shower- and Jacuzzi-equipped bathrooms. Most of the furnishings are period pieces, and the decorative appointments are charming without being ostentatious. The beds, however, are brand new reproductions. “We originally had antique beds and found them to be the worst … they were undersized and they’d break down.” In fact, a bridal couple once broke a bed—an embarrassing situation for all. So the innkeepers succumbed to purchasing state-of-the-art, king- and queen-sized beds, much to the pleasure of guests who, let’s face it, only want to experience a little bit of eighteenth and nineteenth century charm. With air conditioning, working fireplaces, and the expected luxury of a modern bed at the end of the day, the inn bridges eras comfortably.

Hauspurg points out where additions to the structure were made, a major portion added to the front in 1805 and the back third, plus the expansion of the second and third floors, in 1890. During the early twentieth century, the Hasbroucks’ fortune was based on the technology of pouring concrete (undoubtedly Rosendale cement) for ponds and pools in the homes of the wealthy. A swimming pool next to the renovated stable—now the Hauspurgs’ own home—was sunk in 1923. It’s painted black to appear less out of character with the other buildings in the compound. “Blue paint is so phony. Now it’s like a swimming hole,” he says, albeit one surrounded by a lush flower border and within earshot of a chicken coop. The Hauspurgs keep Golden Brahmins and Rhode Island Reds, and let the flock out once a week to scour the grounds of bugs. Hauspurg laments they have to be corralled to keep them out of the garden. “They’re worse than goats, but our guests love the fresh eggs.”

The Inn at Stone Ridge now offers quarters for up to twenty-two guests on a bed & breakfast plan. The Hauspurgs also stage special events like pig roasts, barbeques, family parties and weddings on the lawn, producing twenty to thirty such events a year. The light-filled restaurant kitchen was a 1983 addition, and for many years the Hauspurgs ran a dinner house, serving as many as one hundred thirty dinners on a Saturday night. Unfortunately for the locals, this part of the venture could not be sustained due to the basic nature of tourism in the Catskills. Many great eateries find it hard to function solely on weekend clientele, and the Hauspurgs closed the restaurant in 2005. These days they coordinate with Richard and Mary Anne Erickson of the Blue Mountain Bistro Catering Company for their catering needs.

We sit in the empty guest dining room on a Tuesday afternoon to talk about Marbletown Green, a project that was derailed just one year ago after outcry from the townspeople. Eight years ago Hauspurg had annexed the orchard that lies behind the inn and extends to Route 213 and Leggett Road, adding one hundred seventeen acres to the property. Leased to pomologist Mike Biltonen, who’d hoped to maintain strictly ecological farming methods, the orchard continued to serve the locals who are accustomed to this U-pick market for apples, strawberries, raspberries, peaches and pears. Such an undertaking, however, can initially result in a loss of revenue, particularly while bringing what Hauspurg termed an essentially “dead orchard” back to life. It was a loss the Hauspurgs were not willing to shoulder year after year.

Looking for a solution, Hauspurg collaborated with senior designer at Ashokan Architecture & Planning Peter Reynolds, known for his progressive, smart growth developmental concepts. Two large bedrock wells were found on the property, ones that could pump three hundred fifty gallons of water per minute, “Enough to provide the entire town with water,” or greatly augment the town’s supply. Hauspurg envisioned a project that would mimic the density of old European hamlets—a traditional, centralized neighborhood where people could conveniently walk about to local small businesses, a neighborhood that would include local workforce housing and senior housing alike, with no “four thousand square foot, high-end mansions” eating up three or more acres of land per house. He dreamed this neighborhood would take advantage of every possible green energy technology—geo-thermal and photo-voltaic systems integrated in every building, with a potential connection to the dam at High Falls—so as to become a prototypical zero carbon footprint community, one that might further attract green industries to the area.

He tells me, “My goal was to bring this core idea to the community and modify it to suit the needs, like: What else does this community need? A town hall and new post office are greatly needed. Density sounds like a bad word to some, but in developmental circles it is not. Density preserves open space.” Consider the many co-housing communities forming nationwide, most with the integral design function of clustered housing to maximize surrounding open land—one, in fact, called Legacy Farm Co-Housing is soon to take shape on fifty acres of farmland in nearby Rosendale. Most co-housing projects have shared resources as their goals, like the permaculture venture Hauspurg envisioned at Marbletown Green. Residents might have shared the use of communal gardens and a production kitchen for cheese-making and food preservation. Although his ideas were not structured to fit the co-housing model, he emphasizes that the project was, in fact, still in the idea stage, open to community input.

With no intention of wanting to ram a development through zoning, particularly against the will of townspeople, he withdrew the entire proposal. The opposition balked at the possibility that a working farm would be taken out of commission—Hauspurg refutes that the whole orchard would be sacrificed to new construction. And they objected to the addition of three hundred or more households to the town’s school and service resources. But with the current minimal three-acre zoning in force, it is conceivable that any farmer or landowner might legally subdivide and sell a larger tract, thereby adding thousands of new homes to the immediate region.

Is growth inevitable in Marbletown and other like communities in the traditionally rural Catskills? And if it is, what will it look like? Well-planned walking hamlets with surrounding open space or mini-mansions dotting the countryside with strip malls lining the access corridors? Many long-time residents, some of whom were born and raised here, rightfully dread the alteration of the town’s rural character, yet it may be wise to examine all alternative development concepts—and do so with the foresight to realize that, eventually, everything changes. While Marbletown Green is off the table, the imperative to make choices that will affect those future changes equitably, aesthetically, ecologically and responsibly is on the veritable table now.

Meanwhile, the Stone Ridge Orchard is back in business under the new management of Elizabeth Ryan of Breezy Hill Orchard fame. We jump into Hauspurg’s truck and cruise slowly past the small retail outlet, packing plant, cooler, migrant housing, and workshop, through the rows of trees, then stop to greet his niece, Lindsay Arnold. She’s worked farms in Switzerland, France at Findhorn in Scotland, and most recently on an organic vegetable farm in Hawaii. Hauspurg chats with returned migrant workers. “These guys are the real experts,” interjects Hauspurg. “They know every tree in this orchard.” The addition of Ryan’s twenty-plus years experience in growing fruit and operating a viable business in Dutchess County, plus her involvement in the farm-to-market movement in the City—not to mention her pastries, fresh eggs, and pastas now for sale in Stone Ridge—makes for excitement for everyone there. “Elizabeth knows how to make a buck off an apple—by not doing commercial sales. She sells every apple direct to the consumer,” either whole or in juice made on the premises.

“This has basically been a ‘town park’ forever,” he says, explaining that both his inn guests (officially) and the public (unofficially) have access to roam the property. We bump along the service road between stands of Honey Crisps, Galas, Ginger Golds, and many other varieties, past two ponds in which beavers hold sway, to the top of the hill where Hauspurg indicates that the ground might be untillable, but the view is panoramic—High Point, Mohonk, Sam’s Point all awash in late afternoon light. “And none of this is visible from the road below,” he reiterates, which means, also, no one’s view shed would be lost should a group of zero-lotline dwellings be constructed here. As the sun disappears behind the horizon, Hauspurg is somewhat wistful over the loss of the opportunity to contribute his dream to the townspeople and put Marbletown on the map as a thriving green community, but quickly and enthusiastically the talk turns to the abundant wildlife in residence and the awesome bird-watching available. And then he marvels over Ryan’s sixteen thousand chickens. “I only have eighteen, and that’s a handful!”

For the Inn at Stone Ridge rates and reservations contact the Hauspurgs at 845 687 0736 or see www.innatstoneridge.com. And to pick your own apples at the height of the season call 845 687 2587 or see www.stoneridgeorchard.com.