This time of year Mark Fernald is a busy guy.
It’s tax season and as a lawyer and partner at Fernald, Taft, Falby & Little, the amount of preparation required to get all the documents in order and paperwork ready for the filing deadline next month is more than enough to keep him occupied.
But when not in his office combing through W2s, property taxes and mortgage interest, medical bills and childcare expenses, Fernald is in court working to litigate cases in a variety of areas of the law – although there aren’t any court dates on the schedule these days with the court system suspended through at least April 6 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In his free time, Fernald can be found emptying sap buckets for his 110 taps to process into maple syrup. His interest in maple sugaring dates back a quarter century when he started making a couple gallons of syrup from trees on his property with the kids on the woodstove of his Sharon home.
It was 2007 when Fernald decided to build a sugar house on his property to expand his production, although it wasn’t done with the intention of making an income, as he only produces about 20 gallons a year and gives most of his syrup away.
“I wanted to make more and I couldn’t do that on the woodstove,” he said.
There’s something about getting outside and seeing what the maple trees have given him each day that keeps him going back to the sugar house on those late winter/early spring nights to boil the necessary 40 gallons of sap to make maple syrup.
Outside of a few 2x4s and some nails, Fernald built his sugar house using all reclaimed materials. A lot of it came from when he took down his old garage and the rest was found through salvage or at yard sales, including the cement mix.
When the syrup season is over, Fernald will turn his attention to the large garden areas at his home that include a 2,500 square foot vegetable garden and about the same amount of area spread out for flowers.
“I like it, but it’s a lot of work,” Fernald said.
As an avid tennis player since his youth, Fernald plays two to three times a week at the Monadnock Indoor Tennis Club and will also make his way to Adams Playground when the weather warms up for friendly matches that bring back memories of his days growing up in Peterborough.
“It keeps you young,” Fernald said.
He admits it’s a little easier to find court time these days, but back when he started playing in the mid-1960s tennis was a thriving sport in the area. That influx of youth players translated into some pretty good tennis teams during his time at ConVal in the 70s.
Last month, Fernald took the stage with the Norway Pond Festival Singers for a concert and is planning to do the same in July when Monadnock Music hosts a memorial concert at the Peterborough Town House to celebrate the life of founder James Bolle.
As the son and grandson of lawyers, it always seemed the natural path for Fernald was to practice law. But it wasn’t until his junior year at Amherst College that he decided that was the career he wanted to pursue. So he took the Law School Admission Test and ventured to Boston College for law school, where he met his wife Beth. Together they have two children, Matthew, and Katie.
Out of law school, Fernald worked at a huge law firm for four years, but realized it wasn’t the kind of law he intended to practice.
“The work was interesting and challenging, but I couldn’t see myself doing that long term,” he said. “When you work for a corporate law firm, you work for corporations. It was very distant.”
Fernald wanted to work for people. He wanted to sit down in his office and meet face to face with clients – not talk over the phone to people that he rarely ever met in person.
“You’re a problem solver when you’re a small town lawyer,” Fernald said. “People come through the door with all kinds of problems, and it’s a good feeling when you get something done for someone and they’re appreciative.”
In 1988, he joined the firm in Peterborough where his dad, Richard, had been practicing since 1961. It was there he found a home that felt like the kind of work he wanted to do. That’s why he’s stayed for more than 30 years.
“I like solving problems. I like helping people,” Fernald said.
Fernald has never practiced criminal law. “I’ll leave that for other people,” he said.
But practicing in areas like probate, family law, corporate and business law, tax abatement and civil litigation, Fernald has spent many days in a court room, including a dozen that have made their way to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Of those cases, Fernald said only two have been similar. And that’s what he likes about the work he does, the variety and complexity that comes with just about every case.
“It seems like every day is different,” Fernald said. “And it turned out to be the right thing for me.”
Fernald was always interested in public policy and decided to run for State Senate in 1998 for District 11, becoming the first democrat to hold the seat since the Civil War. He was spurred to run by the Claremont Decision.
“We had this huge challenge that we needed to find a way to pay for public education that was constitutional,” Fernald said.
Fernald knows that the property taxes in New Hampshire are unfair. During his time in the Senate, he did an analysis of property taxes between New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Florida and Delaware. Each state has a different tax structure with New Hampshire only collecting property taxes, Florida has property and sales tax, Delaware has property and income tax and Massachusetts has all three.
A comparison of similar homes in both price and size in Jaffrey and Winchendon revealed the property taxes were double in the Granite State. When compared to all three states, Fernald realized that New Hampshire tax payers were paying more overall with just property taxes.
“When I ran in 1998, I said we should have an income tax for education,” he said. “Everybody knew we had a problem, so if we’d all come together to solve it.”
Fernald said that since 1999, property tax bills by 50 percent, but what is worse is the funding structure for public education.
“We have to educate our kids and we need to find a fair way to do it,” he said. “My thinking is the same as its always been – we spend more money on education than anything else and that’s how it should be.”
Fernald finds the state constitution an amazing document, drafted while working to create a democracy in the ashes the British empire.
“You can see how hard these people were thinking in 1784,” Fernald said.
Fernald ran again in 2000 and was reelected to the State Senate. In 2002, Fernald was the democratic nominee for governor in a bid to succeed Jeanne Shaheen, but lost to Craig Benson in the general election.
“I either had to move up or move out,” Fernald said.
He attempted to regain his Senate seat in 2004, but fell by a mere 400 votes.
The idea of getting back into politics never left Fernald’s mind “but the timing was never right.” Then 2018 he looked to rekindle his political career, but lost in the democratic primary.
He still doesn’t rule out another run. “Maybe an opportunity will present itself.”
But while Fernald has ideas for how to make New Hampshire better for all Granite Staters, this corner of the state is where he’s always called home. He went to Peterborough Consolidated School, which was quite the experience considering his class moved buildings every year for six years in a row.
Even though he left for college and law school and worked in Boston, the idea of coming back to the area was always there. This is home and its the people that make it so important.
At 61, Fernald has no plans to retire, even with Beth set to retire from her work in foreign service. His dad worked till he was 87, but “I won’t work that long,” he said.
But for the time being, he’ll continue to work hard for his clients, make a few more batches of maple syrup and play tennis. And when the weather warms up, Fernald will roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty. All the things he enjoys the most.