Eric Tenney, a seventh-generation Antrim farmer who died Friday, Sept. 19, is remembered as the rock of his family, a successful and innovative farmer, a tireless volunteer, a passionate history buff and a fierce advocate for the Antrim community.
Crista Tenney Salamy says her father did so much for the town of Antrim, she can’t remember it all.
“He was on the Select Board for three terms, he was treasurer of the Historical Society; he was Water and Sewer Commissioner. He was very active in the Lions Club, ” she said. “He was still the town treasurer when he passed.”
Salamy said her father served on the Select Board during several challenging times, including when the town faced a budget deficit, when Antrim Wind was built, and when the ConVal School District proposed closing Great Brook Middle School.
“There were some difficult times, but he always just loved serving the town, and he always did what he thought was best for Antrim,” Salamy said.
The Tenney family has been farming in Antrim since 1815. Tenney attended Cornell University’s agricultural college, where he met his future wife, Linda Wisz Tenney. The two were married for more than 60 years.
Tenney had recently attended his 60th reunion at Cornell.
“We just went this summer, and he had the most wonderful time. We’re so grateful he was able to go on that trip, ” Salamy said. “He always joked he wanted to go to Cornell not because it was an Ivy League school, but because it was far enough away that he wouldn’t have to come home and milk cows on the weekend.”
Linda Tenney, who grew up in western New York, said she wasn’t sure about spending her life in Antrim, but she was sure about Eric.
“He just loved Antrim so much,” Linda Tenney said.
Salamy said her father always told her, “If you live in a small town, you have to give back.”
“He said, ‘Crista, it doesn’t have to be something big, but it has to be something. That is your duty living in a small town,’ ” she recalled.
Along with serving on numerous town committees, Tenney helped organize Antrim Home and Harvest and started the tradition of hosting fireworks for the community at the Tenney Farm fields. He also served as Hillsborough County representative to the state USDA, advising legislators on agricultural policy.
“He also drove a ConVal school bus for a while, and he absolutely loved it,” Salamy said,
The family calls the farmstand and fields on Route 202 the “New Tenney Farm,” since the Tenney family had farmed at different locations around town since 1815. The property was once a dairy farm owned by Boston landowner George Winslow before Tenney’s father, Stanley, purchased it.
Eric Tenney transitioned the farm from dairy to fruits, vegetables, and bedding plants, and founded the Tenney farmstand, with the signature sign “Our Own Stuff.”
“Farming was his calling,” Linda Tenney said. “Like anyone has a calling or a vocation, farming was his. It was his dream.”
Salamy said the farm’s location along the Contoocook River has helped it endure recent droughts.
“We are permitted to use the river for irrigation if we have to,” Salamy said. “That has enabled us to stay in business in times like this, during severe drought.”
Eric Tenney was also a “huge history buff,” particularly of the Civil War, and spent years creating a database of where soldiers from New Hampshire regiments died.
“My dad traced the part of his family who was from Dublin, the Richardsons, and he researched an ancestor who had died in a Civil War battle, and he went to the battlefield and found the exact spot,” Salamy said. “I have to figure out what to do with the database.”
In the past few years, Linda and Eric Tenney visited every historical marker in New Hampshire, and all but one in Vermont.
“We missed one way up on the border of Canada because of the weather. We had planned to go back,” Linda Tenney said. “We were both huge history buffs.”
Tenney also loved genealogy and traced the Tenney family back to Rowley, Mass., where they arrived from England by ship in 1638.
“He and Cynthia Jewett, our librarian, figured out that their Jewett and Tenney ancestors came on the exact same ship,” Salamy said. “He loved that, it was such a strange coincidence.”
The Antrim Historical Society honored Tenney with a “Road Scholar” award.
“He knew every road in Antrim, every house, and he knew where everyone was buried,” Salamy said. “The historical society consulted him all the time.”
Linda said her husband was always curious and forever starting new hobbies and interests, and that he rarely watched TV, except for Patriots and Red Sox games.
“His latest thing was researching the Erie Canal,” Linda Tenney said. “The locks, the channels, how it was built.”
Salamy said her father “never stopped wanting to learn, and never stopped having new interests, and always wanted to know more.”
Linda Tenney said her husband was always trying new ideas on the farm.
“He started pick-your-own strawberries, he brought in the cider mill, he started the bedding plants,” Linda said. “And he started the sweet corn, and that has really become our trademark.”
Salamy says her father was especially thrilled that his grandsons, Hunter and Jaxson Salamy, will carry on the Tenney family tradition. Both grandsons are now helping run the farm.
Salamy said that in one of her last conversations with her father, who died after a sudden illness, he told her how grateful he was for the life he had had.
“My dad looked at me, not long before he died, and said, ‘All my dreams have come true,'” Salamy said. “And it was true.”