Pap Steve here. Most days I’m rattling on about QLED TVs or robot vacuums. Today the gadgets get a day off. I want to take you back to the summers I spent as a kid at my family’s dairy farm in Windham, New York, up in the Catskill Mountains.
Those days stuck to me like molasses on a biscuit. They taught me what hard work really means. Now I go back to those mountains every chance I get, to a log cabin we built in 2014 that looks out over that same farm. Grab a coffee, or heck, a cold lemonade, and pull up a chair.
Brandowdale: Two Hundred Years on One Patch of Greene County
The farm was called Brandowdale. It was a dairy farm in Windham, in Greene County, and my ancestors ran it from the early 1800s on an ancestral land grant. That’s a lot of milkings.
The Brandow name is the Americanized version of the German Brandau. My mother traced us back to the Palatine Germans who came to New York around 1710. After that, Brandows farmed all over Greene County for generations: in Athens, Hunter, Ashland, and Windham. By the 1900s, that meant dairy in Windham.
My grandparents were Elwood and Alice Brandow. Grandma Alice was born Alice M. Austin in 1906, and Grandpa Elwood L. Brandow came along in 1908. Their first child, a son named Elwood Jr., died as an infant in 1932. We honor his legacy. I lost Grandpa in 1977, when I was just 8, and Grandma Alice in 1981.
Grandma Alice’s Sticky Buns and Grandpa Elwood’s Maple Syrup
Every memory I have of Grandma Alice and Grandpa Elwood centers on that farm. Grandpa Elwood made his own maple syrup, and every time we visited, out came a jug of it. Grandma Alice ruled the kitchen, and I spent plenty of time in there watching her cook and bake, hoping somebody would need a taste tester.
One memory stands out. When we would come to visit the farm, Grandma Alice always had cinnamon sticky buns waiting for us fresh out of the oven. It was the 1970s, and somehow, before all this technology we have in the palm of our hands, she timed our arrival perfectly. No cell phone, no GPS, no “we’re twenty minutes out” text. It was like magic to a child back then. They were ooey gooey sweet and absolutely delicious!
I suppose that’s where my own love of the kitchen got started. Long before I ever fired up a pressure canner, I was a little kid at Grandma’s elbow, soaking it all in.
Station Wagons, Holsteins, and Bare Feet
Windham is one of those tucked-away gems, about three hours north of New York City. The air smells like wild mint and thyme, and the hills roll out like a green quilt. Back in the ’70s, when I was maybe four or five, my folks piled us into the old station wagon every summer and off we went.
It was no fancy spread. Brandowdale was a hardworking dairy farm with a red barn, a herd of Holsteins, and a view that could knock your socks off. My siblings, my cousins, and I spent our summers there, and as we got older we spent them working.
I can still hear the cows mooing at dawn. I can still feel that cool dirt under my bare feet and smell the sweet hay Grandpa stacked higher than I could climb.
Everything felt big and alive up there. I’d toddle after Grandpa Elwood when he went out to milk. His weathered hands moved like clockwork: bucket, stool, and a whistle while he worked. He’d let me “help” by carrying a little pail or tossing feed to the chickens, and I’d puff out my chest like I was king of the farm.
One time I got it in my head to chase a calf around the pasture. I ended up face-first in a mud puddle, laughing till I cried, while Grandpa just shook his head and grinned.
Evenings were porch time, with a root beer, watching fireflies dance over the fields as the sun dropped behind the mountains. Hot days, cool nights, and a feeling that life was just right.
“Every Corner, Stevie”: Lessons in Hard Work
It wasn’t all play. That farm is where I learned what work really means, and I owe that to Grandpa. He wasn’t a man of many words. He was tough as nails, with a handshake that could crush a walnut, and he lived by a code: if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
He was up before the sun tending cows, fixing fences, and hauling hay. He never complained, even when his back ached or the rain wouldn’t quit.
One morning he handed me a broom. I couldn’t have been more than five. “Sweep the barn floor, Stevie. Every corner.” It took me an hour and I griped plenty. When I finished, he nodded and said, “Good job.”
That stuck. It’s why, at 57, I still put everything I’ve got into whatever I’m doing, whether that’s reviewing a MacBook or building this website for you folks. Grandpa’s work ethic is in my bones.
Something else came down the family line too: canning. I learned it from my mother, and she learned it from her mother, my grandmother. Every time I fire up a pressure canner, I’m doing it the way they did.
A Log Cabin in the Catskills
Those memories faded a bit as I grew up. School, jobs, and raising my own kids kept me busy, and when Grandpa Elwood passed, the farm was sold. The Catskills never really left me, though. I’d drive up now and then just to see the hills.
In 2014 my family and I decided to put down our own roots there. The farm itself was gone, but the family had inherited some of the acreage, and that’s where we built a log cabin, nothing fancy, just cozy and solid, on a ridge above where the old farm used to hum. The dairy days are long gone, and wildflowers and quiet fields have taken their place. From my porch I can still trace where Grandpa’s barn stood, and it feels like he’s out there tipping his hat.
I spend as much time in Windham as I can, and summers are my favorite. My grandkids tear around the cabin chasing each other the way I chased that calf. I grill burgers and watch the same sunset I watched as a kid.
The mountains haven’t changed much. They’re still that mix of rugged and gentle that us 40-to-65-year-olds can appreciate. I’ll sit out there with a beer while the log walls creak in the breeze. Half the time there’s no Wi-Fi, and you know what? I don’t mind. It’s a break from the tech I usually rave about, a chance to unplug and just be.
Brandowdale South: Carrying the Name to Carolina
Our homestead in Blythewood, South Carolina, is called Brandowdale South, after the farm in New York. It’s a lot smaller than a dairy operation: eight 4’x8′ metal raised beds, plus a perennial garden that’s still coming together. Still, every time I’m out there in the dirt I feel some of that old Windham work ethic.
Pap Steve’s Field Notes: Brandowdale by the Numbers
- Farm: Brandowdale, a dairy farm in Windham, Greene County, NY
- In the family since: the early 1800s, on an ancestral land grant
- Family name: Brandow, Americanized from the German Brandau
- Came to New York: around 1710, as Palatine German immigrants
- Greene County towns farmed: Athens, Hunter, Ashland, Windham
- Grandparents: Elwood L. Brandow (1908–1977) and Alice M. Austin Brandow (1906–1981)
- Grandpa Elwood’s specialty: homemade maple syrup
- Grandma Alice’s specialty: cinnamon sticky buns
- Log cabin: built 2014 on inherited family acreage
- Brandowdale South: Blythewood, SC, with eight 4’x8′ metal raised beds and a perennial garden in progress
There’s more digging I’d like to do. The Greene County Historical Society’s Vedder Research Library and the Town of Windham Historical Society are both on my list. If you know anything about the Brandows of Greene County, I’m all ears.
Your Turn
I reckon some of you have your own Windham, a place that keeps pulling you back, where you learned life’s quiet lessons. Maybe it’s a farm, a lake house, or the old neighborhood. I’ve got the Catskills in my blood, and that cabin is how I keep them close. Next time I’m up there I might drag the laptop along and write a review from the porch, something like “Best Binoculars for Mountain Views” for us over-40 explorers.
So that’s my story: summers of mud, milk, and mountains, and a work ethic that carried a little boy with a broom all the way to a grandpa with a website. Drop a comment below and tell me about your summer spot. I’d love to hear it.
God Bless Y’all,
Pap Steve
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