The Rossmans’ Century Farm
Shirley Rossman’s whole life has unfolded among the house and barn on 84 acres of preserved farm fields and woods two miles east of Old Fort along Route 45. Her family has held the land since 1862, when Shirley’s great-great-grandfather James Grove bought 102 acres and began farming.
Shirley grew up in the house. She married Dale Rossman, who grew up on a nearby farm and still works the fields, now planted with oats, corn and soybeans.
It’s difficult to imagine a stronger connection to the land than that of Shirley and Dale Rossman’s.
Surrounded by Fields
They were married at the farm and raised three children here. The house has a music room where Shirley taught lessons, and views of the fields stretching to the north, east and west. Their view is mostly fields and most of the fields are theirs — except for a few commercial buildings on Route 45.
They want the farmland to stay that way, and in 2016 preserved the land with a conservation easement through the Centre County Farmland Trust.
“Family is important,” says Shirley, explaining their decision to preserve the land. The easement means the family’s farmland cannot be developed. To the Rossmans, the easement represents a way to keep the land in the family and farmed the way it has been for generations — and as Shirley and Dale’s children, Carol, Terry and Gary, remember it throughout their lives.
“That means a lot to our kids,” says Shirley.
Dale and Shirley have both noticed the conversion of farmland into housing developments in the area. One is on Sinking Creek Road near Route 144. Others are nearby on Route 45, though not within view from the house.
“We didn’t want houses out on it,” says Dale. “Down the road, if they keep selling farms off for development, where is the food going to come from?”
Century Farm
The Rossman Farm is a Pennsylvania-designated Century Farm, which means it’s been owned by the same family for at least 100 consecutive years and a family member still resides on the farm.
James Grove, who purchased the 100 acres in 1862, left the farm to his son, Thomas, and Thomas passed it down to his son, Whitmer (Shirley’s grandfather.) Whitmer gave the land to his daughter Emma (Shirley’s mother) and two adjoining farms to his sons Tom Grove and Harrison Grove.
The Rossmans gave each of their children an acre of land to build a house. Their sons built and live in houses and their daughter lives on an adjacent farm.
Fields, Woodland & Memories
About 10 acres of the property is woodland. Sixteen acres are planted in corn, eight in oats and 32 acres in soybeans.
The land is within the Sinking Creek and larger Penns Creek watershed. Its scenic frontage on the north side of Route 45 helps maintain the beautiful landscape and agricultural character along the Route 45 corridor.
Shirley and Dale celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary June 8, 2024. For their wedding, at the house in 1955, Shirley’s father renovated the two-story house into a 1.5-story bungalow.
Her job, Shirley recalls, was to pound the nails out of walnut boards to so they could be used to finish the house in time.
She is proud of her family’s history and ties to the land, full of memories of raising St. Bernard dogs for sale, rabbits for meat and chickens for meat and eggs. She is happy to show items like the heavy, cast iron cannonball found on the land and a big album of collected family photographs, including a printed invitation to the wedding of her grandparents Whitmer and Emma (on Christmas Day, 1900) and news clippings bound within covers of thick wood.
Community Help after Barn Fire
The white barn with black trim is new, built in 2009 to replace the original barn destroyed by fire on a Saturday night that March. Neighbors gathered Monday morning to help cleanup. “The following Saturday, you wouldn’t know a barn had been there. It was all cleaned up,” Dale recalls.
Over the next six weeks, local carpenters helped build a new barn on the same spot. When their day ended at 3:30, the family and neighbors who came to help would keep working until dark.
The white barn now bears the years 1862 — when the Grove family first acquired the land — and 2009, the year the old barn burned and the family and community rebuilt the barn, for hopefully many more years of service to this farm family.
