Located inside Borderland State Park, the Smith Farm in North Easton has an ethereal type of draw, a magic to it that once you see it, you can’t help but want to be connected to it.

“It’s surprising how few people from this area know about it,” said Rich Eastman, Executive Director of Smith Farm at Borderland. “There’s a tremendous draw to the place, something about it that is hard for people to explain when they go by it. They all just talk about how peaceful it is and how it makes them feel.”

The farmhouse was originally built in 1880 by Dr. Asahel Smith, a local physician who was described as a “clairvoyant healer.” It is on the National Register of Historic Places, and was offered up for a curatorship by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation back in 2009.

“The DCR curatorship program comes in when the state can’t afford to renovate a historic property,” Eastman said. “They open it up to the public for bid, and then the people that win the bid are responsible for renovating the place, after which they have anywhere from a 40-year to a 60-year lease, rent-free.”

The two people who initially put in the bid are no longer involved, and now it is run by a board of directors, Smith Farm at Borderland, Inc. Eastman became involved in 2014, when he said he “stumbled upon” the farm while doing genealogy research on his family. Dr. Asahel Smith was his third great grandfather.

“I had a bunch of pictures that I brought down to the curator. We met, one thing led to another, and they asked if I wanted to be on the board,” Eastman said. “And here I still am.”

Dr. Ashamel Smith, the “Clairvoyant Healer”

According to the history on the Smith Farm website, Ashamel Smith worked as a shoemaker in his early days in Easton,…