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Originally Posted by LIforrelaxin
This is all so interesting.... and has gotten to the point where it is hard to believe any side of the story.... When it all started some odd years ago I remember being by farm Island and hearing a Rooster... No doubt to wake up the campers, and cause some grief....
But it has been drawn out into a soap Opera, and to be honest I can't quite figure out who owns farm Island.... Randy has made all this noise about it but I have also found that someone who I assume is a relative, Cody Owens professing to own the Island as well... But Honestly I don't care....
What I do care about is the fact, that a Property Owner, and a YMCA Camp directory, can't be adult enough to work through some differences. To my knowledge the camp has owned and used part of the Island for years... When the Owens family bought the rest of the Island they knew that full well, or at least should have known that full well.... Likewise the Camp should have known there was new ownership and not continued to use the island like the owned the entire Island.... While subdividing the Island may have been properly planed, there should have been a thought in the back of ones head that hey I am doing something that is likely not going to make people happy.... It wasn't just camp Belknap that had issues with the idea of subdividing the island. But instead of working through issues, both sides decided to start mud slinging.... and now many years later the mud is still flying...
At the end of the day, this chapter in the History of Farm Island is pretty sad. One Wonders what the Winchesters would have to say about this unsavory notoriety.....
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The roosters were nothing of my doing and nothing to do with the Camp. It was a buddies prank on me. Hell, I lived there. In the end, though, we became good friends. That was the summer of COVID, and CB was shut down.
Thank you for asking about the Winchesters. The “soap opera” began long before Cindy Pratt and Randy Owen, through C & R Realty, LLC, made a deposit on Farm Island.
While in the permitting stage and before I closed, I agreed with the Winchesters to be caretaker. I met David Winchester for the first time in November of 2018 at the island for dock removal instructions. He was aware that the CB tactics had begun. He was extremely apologetic and said, “The realtor should have warned you about Camp Belknap.” He went on to explain how CB had promised him a mainland dock space for his boat and, when Seth came in, he never even called him but pulled his boat out and dumped it in the sand. He said, “Sure, it was an older boat, but he just dumped it in the sand. Had he called me, I would have been able to load it at the boat ramp.”
He went on to tell me how CB would break into my house — his at the time — and he would secure the door. He put better and better locks and boarded it up more securely, and again and again they would break in. He reported and re-reported the break-ins to Seth, and they continued. David shared many of the extended fights and disputes with CB and ended with, “And Randy, you will not believe the lies,” and “All they do is lie.” At one point, the camp was riddled with bullets, and I am not sure whether David said or believed CB did it, but every single person who knew anything about the Winchester-CB battles felt it was CB. One day just prior to a Planning Board meeting I was gathering information from David about the CB tactics and David's last words of encouragement were “Go get em Randy”..
As soon as the ice was safe in January of 2019, I went out to the island and took down a huge dead tree leaning toward my house. While doing this, three nice young men came up to the house, past the no-trespassing signs, and spoke with me. One’s first name was Owen — how could I forget — and the other was a grandson of Lucy, who owned the infamous Cow Island restaurant.
At the time, I did not yet own the property, and their trespassing while we were there seemed harmless. The young men were very pleasant and identified themselves as off-duty counselors. Cindy and I shared our life stories about Cow Island and going to Lucy’s. They explained the ritual of entering the Winchester home with a cadet and spooking him inside. They even detailed the furniture and what room it was in. It all seemed innocent as they congratulated Cindy and me on our new endeavor.
At one time, she was one of the most peaceful, loving people I have ever known, now hardened by the fight with Camp Belknap.
Please read Heart Home by Cynthia Pratt.
“Heart Home”
For much of her life, Cynthia Pratt had a hard time answering the question, “Where are you from?” She grew up in New Jersey, but would spend all of her childhood summers on Winnipesaukee’s Cow Island, and those summer months were more meaningful to her than the rest of the year in New Jersey. So, she started answering that question with, “New Hampshire is my heart home,” she said.
“That’s where my fondest childhood memories came from; that’s when our family came together. It was a place where we came together and bonded,” she said.
Then life took her away from New Hampshire. She got married, had children, got divorced, raised her children to adulthood, and eventually was able to move back to New Hampshire, where she met her current partner, Randy Owen. Owen had also grown up summering on Winnipesaukee, and he also has three adult children.
“It has always been my dream to get back to Winnipesaukee, create the same wonderful experience for my family,” Pratt said. “I know he [Owen] wants the same for his family.”
Pratt and Owen are behind C & R NH Realty Trust, LLC, the name on the subdivision application currently before the Tuftonboro Planning Board. Pratt said it’s upsetting to hear their plan as a destructive force by their potential neighbors.
“Our dream for the property is to try and maintain the tranquility of Farm Island, while being able to create that wonderful family environment that they all get to enjoy on their properties and we enjoyed as children. We just want the same for our families,” she said.
At the center of Farm Island is the remains of a circa-1906 cottage, which Pratt and Owen plan to restore for their personal use. She said they do not plan to market any of the other lots in the near future.
“It is quite a substantial purchase price and quite a substantial price for the project. To invest that kind of money, we do need some sort of security should something happen down the line to Randy or me. The subdivision is more about financial security in the future, should we need that,” she said.
She said that she can see where the opponents of the plan are coming from. After all, both she and they are motivated by the same thing: a love for Lake Winnipesaukee.
“I understand it from their perspective. It’s not that we’re trying to hurt anyone or mess up anyone’s experience, we just want the same experience for our families. The lake is such a magical place,” Pratt said.