Second in a seven-part series.

LEEDS -- A spindly asparagus stalk stretches its limbs into the breeze. The tough old relic is a tender reminder of what this hard-knock little stretch of central Maine farming land once produced.

The farmhouse where former Maine governor Ken Curtis grew up has long since been razed. The fields haven't produced anything except for the renegade asparagus in generations. The wooded pasture hasn't been thinned for decades, filled in now by secondary growth at nearly every turn.

And yet, all of these developments are exactly what makes the Curtis Homestead Conservation Area one of the cornerstone properties now held by the Kennebec Land Trust.

"There's a variety of different habitat there," said Howard Lake, one of the founding members of the land trust, which was established 20 years ago this November. "The fields, some old woods, some new woods. The Monmouth bog. The old apple trees.

"The history of the area is so evident with the stone walls, the apple trees and the lane that goes out into the woods."

All of it screams working New England farm, even though the only work it's doing now is looking good.

Child's play

When Abner Curtis Sr. started building his farm at the turn of the 19th century, the Massachusetts man had no way of knowing that more than 200 years later, two men would stand where his farmhouse once stood and point to a bog on a map.

"Wouldn't it be great if you could somehow build a boardwalk out there?" Howard Lake asks, not long after our efforts to hike to the edge of the bog were thwarted by marshy growth taller than either of us.

"If you're going to do that," I ask, "why don't you just build one all the way out to the island?"

It's been only a couple of hours, but already Lake knows me well enough to know that I can't be serious.

We think some more, staring at the map, where Oak Island is not more than a couple of tenths of a mile from Curtis Rock. Its impressive red oaks and white pines are accessible when the ground is frozen over in the winter.

"Well, actually," I say more seriously, having looked closely at the west side of the map posted on the kiosk, "what if you went from here? It's nowhere near as long."

Lake pauses, thoughtfully.

"I wonder what it would take..."

His voice trails off.

It's that very same sense of wonder that created the Gov. Curtis Homestead.

It's the same sense of wonder that had Ken and Rebecca Curtis running through the woodlots as children.

It's the same sense of wonder that led them to believe that other people could share in their enchantment.

Curtis Rock stands on the edge of a ridge, now a perfect picnicking spot, where the children would overlook the bog and Oak Island on the other side.

Undoubtedly, they would run among the trees, playing hide-and-seek and other games, their voices and giggling carrying through the woods. Certainly, they ate apples from the trees in the field.

"But most of the time I ever spent there was usually working with my father," Ken Curtis said last week, from his home in Sarasota, Fla.

"One thing I really did love to do was go fishing. I loved to do that. There was a trout stream that ran all the way down, and it ran into that large bog. I remember there was a beaver dam there and you could always catch some good trout by the beaver dam."

Curtis and his sister eventually decided that the thought of someone else's family living in their house was too much for them to bear.

They had the buildings taken down and the land was donated to the Kennebec Land Trust in 2000. The woodlot has been pushed back to make the field larger and wood duck boxes are inhabited by bluebirds. The stone walls in the woods outline the old grazing pastures.

"Where does conservation come from? In Maine or in the Kennebec county area?" asks Theresa Kerchner, the stewardship director for the Kennebec Land Trust.

"It's when families have been here a long time, in farming or in forestry, having worked the land. That's when it shows up in conservation in Maine. It's when people have that real working connection to the land and don't want to see it lost."

Historical habitat

"I'm very pleased with how it's turned out," Curtis said. "Our family's ownership goes back to the 1800s. My sister and I, we felt the best way to pay tribute to the people that had worked the land so hard for so long was to see that it was preserved."

As I walk the grounds with Howard Lake, particularly as we cross a grassy field swaying gently in a light morning breeze, I feel like I'm walking into a painting on a wall in my grandmother's house.

"It's just the confluence of all the things that we look for," Lake said of the 360-acre parcel of land, more than twice the size of any other KLT property. "It's got history and habitat."

"It's really an ecological laboratory, on a small scale," Curtis said.

Lake hopes that when others hike the trails or go birding around the bog, that they, too, take time to appreciate what this area of central Maine represents.

"The habitat's the thing, and the history on top of that is the bonus. It's the same with the Vaughan Woods (in Hallowell). The trails and all those things are great, but to know it's part of original Vaughan family and the Kennebec proprietors, that's the really neat part of it.

"Here, to know that it was the home of one of the governors of Maine, in a place with so much to offer, that's really just amazing."

As amazing as the fact that the land has kept its original character.

Like the asparagus stalk.

Travis Barrett -- 621-5648

tbarrett@centralmaine.com