THE FARMHOUSE
BEDS
3
BATHS
2
FIREPLACES
6
SQ. FT.
3,168
STYLE
FEDERAL
WATERFRONT
OCEAN VIEWS
POOL
YES, HEATED
AIR COND.
CENTRAL AIR
Tennis
NO
Back in the day before Martha Stewart became Martha Stewart, it seems she already embodied the domestic dream. Take the three-bedroom farmhouse in Westport, Conn., which she and her then-husband Andy bought in 1971 for the bargain price of $33,750. Many new homeowners would have been content to loll and smell the flowers on the 2.03-acre spread. Not Martha. "Right away she started making things happen," says her friend and Realtor, Susan Warburg. "She was digging gardens, she was stripping paint off doors, stenciling the floors, tending her chickens.... She had the vision of the lifestyle she wanted to create."
Not just a lifestyle, but a billion-dollar lifestyle empire. Stewart, 64 (who last week announced her decision to fight rather than settle civil insider-trading charges brought by the SEC), would eventually turn Turkey Hill into the laboratory for all things Martha. After her 1975 purchase of two adjacent acres, she built a carriage house and party barn, started her catering business from the kitchen, replaced the old floorboards with double-thick pumpkin pine and threw a birthday party for Warburg where "everything was made to look like presents ... the pears had caramel bows on top of them."
As Stewart's dreams expanded, so did her real-estate portfolio, including homes in Maine, East Hampton, N.Y., and a 153-acre estate in Bedford, N.Y., now her primary residence. (The chickens currently live with her friends.) Stewart still loves Turkey Hill, says Warburg, who is showing the property. But now, "it's easier for her to remember the memories, the good ones, and love them and move on."
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