Sam Barnes passed away in 2001. Although his daughter, Sheri Baity, thinks of him every day, it is when she hunts from one of their “Cabins on the Green” that she feels the strongest connection.

The two tiny cabins are about 200 yards apart from each other in the sprawling, rolling acreage of the family dairy farm, in operation in Covington, Pennsylvania, since 1858. Each tidy cabin claims a knoll, and each is similarly equipped with fold down cot, wood stove for heat and cooking, removable windows and radio.For years, the two would hunt and stay overnight in their separate cabins for the first week of the state’s antlered deer season, greeting each other by radio at dawn. Sometimes they’d visit each other’s cabins for a meal.Sheri’s husband, Gary, and her brother and sister-in-law Bob and Ann Lee Tompko also hunted the farm, but Sheri and her dad were the only family members to take to the Cabins on the Green. Gary and Ann Lee had to keep close to the barn, where they took care of the family’s dairy herd, milking them and keeping up with all the other chores.Ann Lee excelled in school and graduated from college with a teaching degree. She spent a year teaching math, but missed the farm life. For the past 30 years or so, rarely missing a day, she’s arrived at the barn at 3 a.m. and works until 9 a.m. She returns every afternoon for the second milking. Bob and Ann Lee’s land meets the family farm in a high corner, not visible from any of their houses. They call that area The Gateway.Sheri Baity and I are doing some predator hunting and she’s an amazing caller, creating yelps and growls which are very realistic. She makes and sells her calls (Crow’s Nest Calls). We have a blast hunting but it’s during the evenings, indoors, that I start to feel a connection to their family farm.I stay alone in the old farmhouse where Gary and Ann Lee’s mother lived. In the evenings, I page through a book of household hints, published in 1967. There are pages folded down by their mother’s hands.“To change the color of a white snowball bush hydrangea to purple-blue, put a handful of nails deep down among the roots.”“The strawberry got its name because it benefits greatly when mulched with a generous pile of straw.”“To unravel a knitted garment, wind the wool around an ironing board. Don’t overlap the strands. Then use a damp cloth and a warm iron to press the wool. Wind it up again into a ball, and it will be good as new.”Staying in the house, I get the sense that she was the type of woman who would have recycled wool. It would be in keeping with the farming lifestyle — use it up, make it do. I also page through the photo album Ann Lee has been keeping since 2002, using pictures taken by the wild game camera pointed to “The Gateway.”On the first page, she’s written the definition for “enchantment,” as “the use of magic spells, a spell or a charm,” and on the next page there’s a stunning picture of a buck caught on a foggy summer morning.“One farm, one family,” is what Ann Lee has proudly written on the page.Sheri and I spend the last evening hunting from her Cabin on the Green. As the day wanes, the light is just right on one of the windows of her dad’s cabin. It looks like there’s a light on in there. I nudge Sheri and point to it, and she is already nodding. “I know,” she says.I leave the farm feeling as if I’ve come under some sort of spell. I guess I am enchanted. They all work so hard they may not consciously think about how they are upholding twin heritages of our state, hunting and farming. I hope they all know how proud they should be.