06/18/2026
The Inheritance
The thought came while I was checking fences after chores. I stopped beside one of the old stone fences on our farm and, for whatever reason, looked at it a little longer than usual. It suddenly occurred to me that every stone had been picked up by somebody. What I’d always seen as an old fence was really years of someone’s life, built one rock at a time. It was such a simple thought, but once it crossed my mind I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That fence wasn’t just holding cattle in. It was holding almost two hundred years of sacrifice together.
My great-great-great-grandfather, Bartholomew Naughton, left Ireland in the early 1840s, travelled through England and settled in Brougham Township, now part of Greater Madawaska. The first census only a few years later recorded just 69 pioneer households in the entire township. It’s difficult to picture today. We drive these roads without giving them much thought, but when he arrived there were no paved roads, no hydro and no machinery waiting to make life easier. Before there were fields there was bush. Before there were farms there were trees, rocks, swamps and years of backbreaking work. Every acre had to be cleared by hand, every fence had to be built, and every step forward had to be earned.
One date has always stayed with me. Bartholomew died on June 24, 1867, exactly one week before Confederation. He spent part of his life helping build a place that would soon become part of Canada, yet he never officially lived in a country called Canada.
What changed everything for me was realizing that Bartholomew was probably about the same age I am now when he made the decision to leave Ireland. At this stage of my life, most of my thoughts revolve around my family. I think about providing for them, building something that will outlast me and leaving this little corner of the world better than I found it. Then I imagine standing on the deck of a ship, watching England slowly disappear over the horizon, knowing there was a good chance I’d never set foot on that part of the world again. Once it disappeared, there was no turning back.
I don’t know exactly what his life was like before he left, and I don’t want to pretend I do. But I know enough about Ireland at that time to understand why so many families were willing to risk everything. Many spent their lives working land they would never own. They could work from sunrise until dark and still have little hope that their children would inherit anything of their own. Canada didn’t promise an easier life. What it offered was the possibility that if you worked hard enough and sacrificed enough, the work of your own hands might one day belong to your family instead of someone else’s.
I think that was the freedom Bartholomew was chasing. Not freedom from work, because there was certainly no shortage of that. Freedom to build something of his own. Freedom to bet on himself. Freedom to believe that if he endured enough hardship, his children, and their children, might someday live a life he never could.
The older I get, the less interested I become in names and dates, and the more interested I become in what families actually hand down. People usually think about land, money or old possessions, but I’m not sure those are the things that matter most. I think my family handed down faith. Not only faith in God, although I’m sure that carried many of them through years I can barely imagine, but faith that there was something better on the other side of uncertainty. Faith that the sacrifices they were making would matter, even if they never lived long enough to enjoy the results. Faith that if they kept putting one foot in front of the other, someone they would never meet would benefit from their work.
There’s something deeply spiritual about that kind of life. You spend years clearing land you’ll never fully enjoy. You build fences your grandchildren will lean on. You improve fields knowing someone else will harvest them. Looking back, I think that’s what my family really passed down. It wasn’t simply a farm or a surname. It was a way of seeing the future.
Kristen and I made our own decision years ago. We both walked away from good careers to build Long Lane Farms. I would never compare our risk to leaving Ireland with everything you owned fitting onto a ship, but I understand what it feels like to bet on yourself. At the beginning, plenty of people thought we were crazy. There were safer ways to make a living and easier ways to build a future. We chose something uncertain because we believed we could build something that belonged to our family. Looking back, I realize that same belief has probably been running through my family for generations.
Sometimes I stop and think about how unlikely all of this really is. Bartholomew survived the journey. He survived building a life here. His children survived. Then their children survived. Through hard winters, sickness, crop failures, loss and all the ordinary hardships that never make it into history books, one generation followed another until, somehow, I ended up here.
My dad farmed. His dad farmed. As far back as I can trace our family in this township, somebody worked the land. Logging was part of life too because around here the two often went hand in hand. Somewhere along the way, farming stopped being simply what my family did and became part of who we were.
Nearly two hundred years after Bartholomew first settled here, one of his descendants is still farming just a few miles up the road. When I stop and think about that, it’s hard to describe what I feel. Gratitude is part of it. Responsibility is another part. Everything Kristen and I are building today rests on a foundation we didn’t create. Long before there was a Long Lane Farms, there was a man about my age who decided to trust that there was something better waiting on the other side of uncertainty.
The photograph at the top of this page means something different to me now than it once did. Bartholomew Naughton is Amelia’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. She doesn’t know that story yet. To her, these fields are simply home, just as they were to me when I was her age. One day I hope she understands that home didn’t happen by accident. It exists because generations before her believed there was something worth building, even if they would never live long enough to see what it became.
Maybe that’s the greatest inheritance my family ever received. Not just land, and not just a name. It was a quiet faith that freedom is worth working for, that some risks are worth taking, and that if you spend your life building something with enough care, your great-great-great-great-granddaughter might simply call it home.
When I look at Amelia walking these same fields today, I can’t help but think that Bartholomew never could have imagined this. Nearly two hundred years after he stepped off that ship, one of his descendants is still farming just a few miles up the road from where he first put down roots. He probably wasn’t thinking about history. He was simply trying to build a better life for his family.
In the end, I think that’s all any of us are really trying to do. If this story resonated with you make sure to share❤️
