A gazebo on a rise about midway along the Crawford Walking Trail sits just in front of where the Wild family homestead once stood.

Last Thursday evening, Wild family members, friends and relatives looked on as the town dedicated the gazebo to Joseph “Buddy” Wild and his wife, Alice, and prepared to mount two small plaques, honoring the couple who rehabilitated a vacant house and farmed the surrounding land for just short of four decades.

Alice’s son Leroy DeGroodt was there with his son Jahrett. Leroy said the family moved into what had been an abandoned house in 1979, and he grew up there. He said the family rented the farm from Orange County, which still owns the property, a slice of the 1,450 acres it bought in Crawford in the 1970s for the Dwaar Kill Reservoir, part of a countywide water loop that never materialized.

Buddy’s son — and Alice’s stepson — Roger Wild said the house that was torn down about seven years ago was big. He remembers four, maybe five, bedrooms. Gone, too, were the multiple barns and welding shop, all once part of a working farm. Oddly, the antique remnants of equipment to manufacture acetylene gas were never removed and are still visible not far from the gazebo. Buddy and Alice raised cows, horses and chickens and, according to family lore, teamed up to cut, rake and bale acres of hay to feed the livestock through the winter.

“Buddy and Alice turned the farm into a meaningful place where children, grandchildren, family and friends were always welcome and could often be found gathering together,” is written on one of the plaques.

One of Roger’s sisters, Roxanne Sprague, teared up while telling a story about how much she treasured a winter she and her husband spent with her dad on the farm while her own house was under construction.

“Everybody loved him,” she said. “I wish I could be like him.”

Town Supervisor Charles Carnes opened the ceremonies with a short introduction of the family and their legacy. Roger thanked Carnes and told the crowd how much the family appreciated the plaques and the time and effort that went into making them. It will be “really cool to see them up on the gazebo,” he said.