As a lifelong resident of Columbia County, N.Y., — 66 years and counting — Nancy Fuller knows the territory and, thanks to an outgoing nature, lots and lots of people in the territory. And they know Ms. Fuller in ever-increasing numbers since she became the host of the Food Network show “Farmhouse Rules,” now in its fifth season. Her debut cookbook, also called “Farmhouse Rules” (Grand Central Life & Style), came out last month.
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Eleven years ago, a friend was researching her family genealogy and wanted to visit a property that was for sale in Hudson, N.Y.; it had once, perhaps, been the home of a relative. Could the well-connected Ms. Fuller help? Of course she could.
“I knew the Realtor, so I called and told him that a friend wanted to see the house and take a few pictures and that I’d be coming along, too, but I wasn’t looking to buy and would he mind showing it to me,” said Ms. Fuller, who owns a food distribution company in the area with her fourth husband, David Ginsberg.
She came, she saw, she said, “Oh, my gosh.” Such was Ms. Fuller’s uncharacteristically understated reaction to a late-17th-century Dutch stone house attached to a 1766 Georgian brick dwelling.
“It was so pristine. It hadn’t been bastardized,” she said. “I’m an antiquer, and this house was the epitome of an antique.”
There were also a couple of vintage outbuildings and 150 rolling acres — just the thing for a large, close-knit family with deep roots in agriculture. Ms. Fuller, the product of 12 generations of farmers, raised six children and is the grandmother of 13. “The house picked me,” she added firmly. “I didn’t pick it.”
She made an offer, then went home to Mr. Ginsberg with the glad tidings. He did not take kindly to her unilateral decision-making. She did not take kindly to his disapproval. He pointed out that she already owned a farm, the 400-acre spread she’d inherited from her parents in nearby Copake. She pointed out that this was a different farm and a different matter entirely. Less than loving words were exchanged.
“I was on my way to a girls’ weekend and I told David, ‘If you don’t want the damn house, you call the damn Realtor and you renege on the damn offer,’ recalled Ms. Fuller, who came home after the outing stunned to learn that her husband had done exactly that.
“I called the Realtor and said, ‘Let me tell you something right now. I’m a big woman and you know, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.’ I made another offer, they accepted it, and the rest is history. And now David loves it.”
Loves it, yes, but Mr. Ginsberg, 68, likes his history modern and his ceilings high. “He kept hitting his head on the doorjambs, and I said, ‘Boy, you’re not too smart. Learn how to duck,’ ” Ms. Fuller said. “And he said, ‘I’m not living here, dammit. I’m only living where I can have a bathroom and a closet.’ ”
That’s why, in 2006, the couple tore down the decrepit carriage shed that was adjacent to this old house. Then, keeping to the same footprint, they built a soaring, light-filled post-and-beam replacement that Ms. Fuller calls “David’s section.”
It contains the open kitchen with the terrifically deep travertine sink that viewers see on “Farmhouse Rules,” a living room, a master bedroom, two bathrooms, a screened porch and, on the lower level, a television room.
It has worked out just fine for the couple, who have been married for 18 years. Mr. Ginsberg now has the conveniences he craved and a place to smoke his cigars in peace. And Ms. Fuller was able to retain the period purity of the older part of the house (it’s mostly used for dinner parties and sleepovers) by stowing all the mechanicals in the reconstituted carriage shed.
Critically, even though she spends the bulk of her time in a 21st-century space, Ms. Fuller is surrounded by what she holds most dear, furnishings and treasures that date back a century or two. And so much the better if they have the patina of ancestral ownership: the cottage cupboard that once belonged to a cousin Ms. Fuller affectionately called Grammy Carl; the bell her paternal grandmother, a schoolteacher, rang to bring the class to order; the pitcher with the painting of a cow that sat on her mother’s kitchen table for years.
“I’m passionate about things that are aged and used and loved,” Ms. Fuller said. “I have to be an old soul because I have an affinity for old things.”
The list of old things is long and includes milk stools, crocks and utensils like a dough scraper, a sugar nipper, a meat hook, a sifter and a trivet that resembles a trampoline without the fabric. A piece of stone that was carved into a bowl holds salt. “It’s extremely important to me because of its age and uniqueness,” Ms. Fuller said.
A mallet that once called Masons’ meetings to order has been repurposed as a garlic masher. “It’s what I use on the show all the time,” said Ms. Fuller, a onetime caterer whose career in television was pure happenstance. An acquaintance who was working on a video asked to use the Fuller-Ginsberg house and fields for part of the shoot. “While the crew was there, the producer asked if I’d ever done TV, because he thought I was ‘a natural,’ ” said Ms. Fuller, who was emboldened to commission a video that was successfully shopped to the Food Network.
Things that don’t have the mileage necessary to please Ms. Fuller can be helped along. To ensure that her new kitchen cabinets wouldn’t look new, she had them built and installed by a couple of teenagers. “They weren’t craftsmen, and that’s what I wanted,” she said. “They made them just the way you would on a farm. The doors don’t meet exactly.”
A pair of antique English pantries and a pair of antique wing chairs sit in the living room beside a homely wash bench that was well used by Ms. Fuller’s paternal great-grandmother. Somehow it all works.
“This part is my favorite,” Ms. Fuller said, leading the way around the corner to the stone house with its enormous fireplace and a low-beamed ceiling. “Sometimes I’ll just bring a book in here and sit and read.”
The carriage shed that was built nine years ago shares a stone wall with the part of the house that was built more than three centuries ago. Ms. Fuller savors the contrast and the connection. “The wall is rustic, and that’s what I am — rustic and real and strong and stubborn,” she said.
“I like the fact that the wall brings the houses together,” she added. “It’s evolution. It’s another phase in the life of this fabulous property.'