Choose Granite Countertops in Plympton, MA for Elegance and Durability

The new HGTV renovation series “Houses with History” takes viewers inside centuries-old properties around the South Shore, starting with a 1735 Cape with an "off-center” chimney and backyard cranberry bog in Plympton.

That home — and its stormy past — is featured in the debut episode, airing at 9 p.m. Sept. 29 and also streaming on the discovery+ platform.

The series follows Plympton couple — designer Jen Macdonald and historian Mike Lemieux, owners of Full Circle Homes, and carpenter Rich Soares as they refurbish six historic —but dilapidated — homes on the South Shore, one of which was built in 1666.

“We look for old houses no one would ever take on,” Lemieux says in the series premiere, “The One with the Cranberry Bog.”

Filming for the six-episode series took place in Plymouth, Pembroke, Plympton, Kingston, Duxbury, Marshfield, Middleboro, Carver, West Barnstable, Sandwich and Bourne.

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In each episode, viewers will learn the origin and renovation stories of the homes, many of which “are hanging on their frames and balancing on their chimneys,” Lemieux says during the episode.

"We take all the old house problems out of the house," he says.

Macdonald, Lemieux and Soares aim to save as many homes as they can “before the bulldozer comes in” and then make them functional for modern families. Other episodes feature an 1800s Greek Revival home, a Dutch colonial and a 1666 Federalist-style home.

A Cape on Crescent Street in Plympton is the focus of the series’ first episode, and when Lemieux, Soares and Macdonald walk in, the walls literally talk to them. Original gunstock beams, a butler's staircase, finely crafted molding and Christian doors, offer clues to the home’s past.

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The team also finds copies of the New Bedford Standard Times newspaper from 1938 under the floorboards, which leads to a discovery that the dwelling was damaged in one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the region. With help from the Pembroke Historical Society, it’s also determined the original owner was the town’s stonecutter and his legacy his honored in the final design of the home.

After each house is restored and renovated, Jonathan Knight, star of HGTV’s “Farmhouse Fixer,” will walk through the finished home for the grand reveal.

"We all love the craft and love older homes," Lemieux says.

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Reach Dana Barbuto at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com.

Standing on the old town green on Route 58, John Henry watched a small stream of cars and trucks pass by and frowned.

“I can’t believe how much traffic we have,” the Plympton selectman said.

Most people anywhere else in Eastern Massachusetts would happily take the road volume that Henry and others find worrisome. But that’s one of the things they say makes the small, historic community of Plympton distinct.

In this land of shingled homes, cranberry bogs and horse stables, the installation of the town’s first traffic signal a couple of years ago was fought by some and still mourned as the arrival of big-city ways.

The nearest MBTA commuter-rail station is five miles away in Halifax. The closest Dunkin’ Donuts shop is five miles away, also in Halifax. Crime is rare. There’s no municipal water or sewer service, and folks like John Henry and resident Debbie West think all that is just fine.

“You’re 45 minutes from Boston and 45 minutes from Providence – yet you’re in the country” said Henry, who has been in Plympton for three decades.

When West and her husband moved back from California 13 years ago, “East Bridgewater was almost too big,” she joked.

West likes Plympton’s friendliness – with a population of fewer than 3,000, there aren’t many strangers. For farmer Fred Schauwecker, the unhurried, low-key life is from another time, “like Cape Cod 50 years ago.”

Selectman Joe Freitas has savored those qualities since he came to town in 1956, when there were only 700 residents.

While he half-seriously frets that newcomers from places like Quincy and Weymouth don’t leave their urban attitude behind – “they think we’re supposed to have sidewalks and everything” – he said they seem to adapt within a few years.

Settled in 1662 and incorporated in 1707, the town was one of the first parishes to separate from the original “Pilgrim church” in Plymouth.

Named for the English town of Plympton – “the only one” in the United States, Freitas notes – the boundaries originally included what is now Halifax and Carver. It’s the smallest southeastern Massachusetts community.

The Revolutionary War’s most famous female soldier, Deborah Sampson, was born on a Plympton farm in 1760. Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army in disguise in 1782, using her deceased brother’s name.

The town of Sharon also claims Sampson, since she lived there most of her life. But folks in Plympton will direct you to her birthplace, a Cape cottage on Elm Street that’s still occupied.

In recent years, a stream of Boston-area transplants have moved here, partly thanks to the revival of the Old Colony commuter rail. But the lack of municipal water and sewer service has limited development – to support a septic system, new houses must be built on lots of at least 11/2 acres, with 200 feet of frontage.

Even without any dramatic growth, Henry and Freitas say Plympton is weathering the recession and slow recovery fairly well, partly helped by a hefty property tax increase this year.

“We’re scraping by,” Henry said. “But we’ve had no layoffs and no overrides. Fortunately, we have very little debt.”

Yet Henry isn’t the only one who is wary of a stealthy shift in the town’s country pace. Rocking Horse Farm owner Lillian Gilpin sees it, too.

In the early 1980s, she rode one of the family’s horses up to Route 58, when the road was a dirt track during construction. But no more.

“It’s gotten busier in the last 10 years,” Gilpin said. “But it hasn’t changed that much. I still like it the way it is.”

Lane Lambert may be reached at llambert@ledger.com.

READ MORE about news and events in Plympton.

And also check out the town of Plympton’s official website, at town.plympton.ma.us.

PLYMPTON (CBS) -- It Happens Here, in Plympton. The rural town got it's first traffic light in 2008, and is the only place named "Plympton" in all of the United States. At 14.8 square miles, it's the smallest town in southeastern Massachusetts.

"We take old houses seriously in town," said John Wilhelmsen, chair of the Plympton Historical Commission.

Wilhelmsen is also the owner of the Reverend Ezra Sampson House, a 1776 timber frame home on Plympton's town green.

"Old homes in really good condition take a special buyer," he said. "An old home in rough condition takes an even more special buyer."

That's where Plympton residents Jenny Macdonald and Mike Lemieux come in. The couple left their jobs in Boston's Financial District to restore antique homes. Their love and passion for not only homes but each other, helped create the business they co-own today.

"Full Circle Homes got started when Jenny and I started dating and we had come full circle. My mom said 'It's amazing it took you guys so long to come together, wouldn't that be a nice name for a business?'" Lemieux explained.

The couple has renovated about 25 homes on the South Shore and a dozen in Plympton alone, taking each one from dreary to dreamy.

"You feel it in the house. It smells really bad. Usually, it's falling apart, abandoned, hasn't been lived in for years. The house feels sad and deserted," Macdonald said. "As you start to lift everything up and restore everything, it starts to get a little brighter and sunnier. When someone moves in and you see lights on in the window it's like 'Wow, there's life in the house again.'"

Things really came full circle for Macdonald during one of their restorations, the Black Walnut House.

"It was a barn to the Captain Hayward House which was coincidentally my family," she said. "Ten generations back they moved from Bridgewater and ran a 275-acre farm. I had no idea until about year two of owning the house."

The home, which is currently available to rent on Airbnb, is filled with carefully crafted beams, custom black walnut furniture and thoughtful family heirlooms.

"My grandmother's light hangs in the window, and that was hung over her table for 70 years, something like that. It makes me a little emotional," Macdonald said.

We also got a sneak peak at the couple's latest project, an 1840's home in the center of town that will be transformed by early summer.

"Many times we don't know the full history until we get into it or open up a wall and you discover artifacts and you gather those stories. We then put that back into the house, so that story continues," Lemieux said.

"Sometimes you can't save everything," Wilhelmsen said. "For the houses that you can save, it's important to be able to have someone like Jenny and Full Circle Homes to be able to see that it's going to take some work and it's going to be a hard thing to get done, but it can be done."

Full Circle Homes also does a town open house at the completion of every project and invites everybody to come. In fact, they tell buyers it's a mandatory part of the home sale. They say it connects the community, inspires people to do their own renovations and sometimes, they end up learning more about the history of the property.

This place is a well-kept secret. Just 35 miles from Boston on the way to Cape Cod, the 15-square-mile Plymouth County town has 2,600 residents and 322 acres of farmland, not counting the nearly 3,000 acres devoted to cranberries. Established in 1707, this peaceful pocket of historical richness and rural beauty attracts a good number of people who are ready to apply the brakes to their lives on the go.

Some come to smell the roses. Others, like Kimberly Russo, prefer to grow them — along with a host of hardy perennials, fruits and berries, and vegetables that range from peas and carrots to bok choy and collard greens. This summer the eastern Kentucky native has started to cultivate people, too, at her and her husband Mark’s aptly named Just Right Farm.

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Every Friday and Saturday night through September, a five-course, prix-fixe dinner planned and prepared by Russo is served in a rustically elegant screen house lighted by oil lamps as the sun goes down. Pinpricks of light from fireflies make it as beautiful as a stage set.

Two dozen guests sit at three sleek 10-foot-long ash dining tables Russo built by hand and enjoy food she grows or procures close by. “I love to cook for people,’’ says Russo. “We’re serving 24 people as though it’s a dinner party.’’

The intimate ambience is enhanced by occasional between-course “hellos’’ from the cook herself, who is assisted in the kitchen by Elaine Murphy of Kingston. Their inspiration, says Russo, “comes from generations of cooks who served uncomplicated food fresh from the earth.’’

“I want to share the farm,’’ says Russo, a self-taught chef and lifelong gardener who studied preservation carpentry at Boston’s North Bennett Street School. “Otherwise, it would be a disservice.’’

“If we really want to work toward preserving these small farms and antique houses, we have to have people see them in a way they can appreciate them,’’ she adds, saying that not everyone likes to dig potatoes out of the dirt, but “people can relate to a quiet, contemporary dining space.’’

A licensed agritourism business with farm-to-table dining, Just Right sets itself apart from the ever-growing number of eateries jumping on the “locally sourced’’ bandwagon. “It’s farm-to-table without the picnic tables. That’s what makes us different,’’ says Russo. “We want to be a middle ground between farm-to-table and fancy chefs who buy veggies.’’

“Our lives on this farm express our passion for sustainably grown food, perpetuating a grounded way of life and being a part of the rural renaissance,’’ writes Russo on her website. In their farming, the Russos don’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, make their own compost, and use local manures and low-till methods of farming. Most of the vegetables they plant are from organic seeds.

Russo and her husband, a holistic veterinarian who shares her commitment to historic preservation, were living in Duxbury when a friend tipped them off to Just Right Farm, which was for sale. As soon as Russo saw the 300-year-old farmhouse on 10 acres, she knew it was right.

“It spoke to me,’’ she says, admitting that at first she thought the name was hokey. “Now, it’s so near to my heart. You couldn’t pay an advertising agency enough money to come up with that name.’’

Dinner is served at 7. Guests are invited to come a bit early and stroll the grounds, nursing a glass of strawberry lemonade, iced tea, or wine tthey have brought. Paths freshly mown in the grass skirt a grove of young peach trees and circle around raspberry bushes, sunflowers, and antique garden furniture strategically placed in groupings around the yard. The oldest garden has sweet peas climbing up posts and an old stone fountain in the center.

There is even a labyrinth modeled on the famous medieval pavement labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral in France.

“People appreciate different things,’’ says Russo. “One couple brought books [to read before dinner], others a Frisbee. Some people are reserved, some boisterous.’’

Whatever their differences, people who make reservations (required) for dinner are all interested in local food. Russo says most of her guests are not farmers, but many are gardeners, like the woman she’ll never forget, who insisted on seeing the gardens during a heavy rainstorm, alone under a big, red umbrella.

“We start by going out to the garden and seeing what will be ready, then we see if something else, like Billingsgate corn or quail eggs from Brad Colton in Kingston, would be good to add to the menu,’’ says Russo. “We have the ingredients first, then come up with the menu.’’

Billingsgate, a 200-year-old farm just down the road, is operated by Peter and Lynn Reading. “We’re very fortunate to have our quality product on her menu,’’ says Lynn, adding that Russo is coming that day for corn. Later I learn that the sweet corn kernels will accompany short ribs, smoked onion garlic jam, cheese grits, Italian flat beans, and eggplant on that evening’s menu. The prix-fixe meal ($100 per person) will start with scallop ceviche and end with coconut cake and house-made coffee ice cream.

Russo laughingly refers to her style of cooking as “Appalachian-New England fusion.’’ Cheese grits often appear in her menus, and another favorite dish is hot slaw, a Kentucky classic made with shredded cabbage for which Russo substitutes kohlrabi and bok choy when they’re in season. Her Southern background and penchant for bold tastes characterize the blend of contemporary and traditional food she’s drawn to cook. Fried green tomatoes and sorghum ice cream are on the same menu one night with basil crème fraîche and rosemary crisps; Kentucky country ham comes with four lettuces and fresh feta.

Like the recipes and food pairings, the setting — in the woods yet elegant — is, as Russo’s friend Mary Lou Sayles of Plympton puts it, “totally Kim.’’ Sayles, who has a background in interior design, is referring to not just the furniture Russo makes in her woodworking shop, but also to her whole design aesthetic: votive candles hang from tree branches; lady’s mantle, nigella, and variegated hosta are in vases adorned with burlap ribbon; a thick, white linen napkin is knotted around each diner’s heavy silver knife and fork. Sayles points out the echoes of Christian Liaigre, a French interior designer known for combining restraint with great elegance.

“I do things that I like to look at,’’ says Russo. “A big armful of eggplant is just as beautiful to look at as it is to eat.’’

As dinner winds down, Russo exits the kitchen to mingle with her guests. Even though they have just finished five courses, including dessert, she insists on sending everyone home with a thin slice of dense chocolate tart.

“It’s working the way we hoped it would,’’ Russo says of her new endeavor. “When I look over [at the screenhouse] and it’s all lit up with oil lamps, and I hear the sound of happy voices, it’s about the nicest thing I can imagine.’’

BY janice randall Rohlf

WRENTHAM — During a baseball career that began as a boy in Plainville, gained traction at King Philip Regional High School and the University of Maine, and culminated in a stint with the Boston Red Sox, Jeff Plympton threw thousands of pitches.

He’s making a pitch of another kind now — one he’d rather avoid for personal reasons.

But his health, and even his life, may depend on it.

Plympton has polycystic kidney disease, known as PKD. An inherited disease, PKD is exactly as it is described: large cysts containing fluid grow on the organ and eventually consume it.

Most patients experience kidney failure at about age 60. Plympton turns 58 next month.

“I’d rather not talk about myself. I’d rather talk about all the great things we’ve got going on here in Wrentham,” said Plympton, who for the last 20 years has been the town’s recreation director. “But the doctors at Rhode Island Hospital say now is the time to start some outreach because the process of finding a match can be long and difficult.”

Plympton has long suspected he has PKD. His mother, Marcia Plympton, was his age when she was diagnosed with the disease and began dialysis treatments.

About a year later, she received a kidney transplant.

“A lot of people throw in the towel and sit at home when they get a transplant,” Plympton said. “Not my mother.”

Marcia Plympton worked until shortly before her death in 2012 at age 75. Some of the best years of her life were the 16 she spent with a donated kidney, her son said.

Plympton was drafted in the 10th round by the Red Sox after playing for King Philip, Maine and Wareham in the Cape Cod League.

His major league career consisted of pitching 5 1/3 innings for the Red Sox in 1991.

Ironically, he learned that he definitely had PKD as a result of an accident on the diamond.

In 2009, three years before his mother’s death, he was playing the outfield in a recreational softball game when he collided violently with a teammate, forcing a stay at Rhode Island Hospital.

“So, the doctor comes to me with some test results and says, ‘Hey, Jeff, do you know you have polycystic kidney disease?’” Plympton said. “I said ‘No, but I’m not surprised.’”

That led to a series of visits to specialists to monitor the disease, first annually, then twice a year, and now every three months.

“Now the doctors are saying, ‘It’s time, we really need to get to work on replacing your kidney,” he said.

Plympton went public with his condition recently on Facebook.

“The reaction has been great,” he said. “Lots of people said they will get tested to see if they’re a match. But it’s tough going public like this. That’s just not me.”

There are a number of ways Rhode Island Hospital can help Plympton find a match. For instance, his brother Steve is not a match, but he has offered to donate a kidney that may be used in a swap program that could lead to an organ donation for Jeff.

Plympton said he has no health restrictions at this time. He continues his job as recreation director in Wrentham where his work has drawn praise, especially for spearheading the development of the 80-acre William Rice Recreation Complex.

He also owns and operates the Crush, a group of traveling youth baseball teams.

“I have fun with my job,” he said, “and I still have my baseball teams. You’d never know anything is going on, but I really have no choice (to have the transplant). I have to do this now.”

He and his wife Linda are enjoying life now. Their children, Nicole and Jeff Jr., are living and working nearby. His son has the same passion for baseball and is now the varsity coach at King Philip.

They recently welcomed their first grandchild, also named Jeff.

“Things are good,” he said.

Plympton continues to draw inspiration from his mother and how she handled PKD.

“I’ve always had the attitude that, hey, I love life,” he said. “If this is the way things are, then we’ll deal with them and we’ll keep enjoying life.”

If anyone wants to help, Plympton says they can reach out to him at plympton54@comcast.net or to any of his family members. They can also reach out to Rhode Island Hospital by visiting lifespan.org/donorguide, writing to the Division of Organ Transplantation, 593 Eddy St., APC 921 Providence, RI 02903, or calling Sarah Gibb at 401-444-3091.