LOWER MILFORD TWP., Pa. - The 231 acres in sleepy Zionsville sit 10 miles south of Allentown, on land granted by the sons of Pennsylvania founder William Penn in 1730.
The owners said it is among the oldest homesteads in the Lehigh County area.
Nestled next to Blue Mountain, the property holds a native trout stream, raspberry gardens and wildlife — and golden eagles swoop down to visit as they migrate across the country.
- Owners Jeff and Deb Dershem bought the property around 20 years ago
- They are asking $5.1 million for 231 acres
- The historic property has roots dating to William Penn's family
Owners Jeff and Deb Dershem are selling the property off Kings Highway, which has been on the market for less than a year. Their asking price is $5.1 million.
But the couple is not looking to sell to just anyone.
They want a buyer who will get from the land what they said it has given them – a deep respect for nature, an appreciation of the property’s history and a pledge to keep it as open and uninterrupted by development as it is now.
Ideally, the Dershems want the property to go to someone who appreciates the lifestyle that the bucolic setting evokes.
“This is very emotional for us. This is very hard,” Deb said. “We’re not looking at it as selling property. We are looking at it as passing the torch for someone.
“We’re not looking at it as selling property. We are looking at it as passing the torch for someone."Deb Dershem, one of the property owners
"It’s very important for us to find the right person — somebody that’s going to appreciate it the way we do and enjoy it and yet take care of it and fix what we have not and where we’re at with some of these buildings.”
The property has not one but three homes, including portions of the original home built not long after William Penn’s sons granted the deed. It also has an original ice-packing house used to store ice for sale in Philadelphia in the summer, and a carriage house that could be renovated into a home.
The Dershems have lived there since 2006 but said it is time to adjust to a place that is easier to care for as they get up in years.
Living off the land
The Dershems manage the forest surrounding the property.
“When there’s trees that are dying, they need to uncover the sun so that certain trees will grow, and the trees that aren’t growing get taken down,” Deb said.
The Dershems have also had to make stream improvements to manage floods, and they practice their own brand of wildlife management.
Deb said they hunt on the property but Jeff prefers fishing and birding. The Dershems do not allow other hunters on the land because they want to protect foxes, deer and even wolves in their natural habitat. Jeff assesses every year how many deer can be taken — no more than just a few — depending on how many are out there.
“Out of respect for the animal, we do not harvest for the sake of harvesting,” Jeff said. “They’re harvested to provide nourishment, which we eat all year long.”
On the property, you can see a bit of the circle of life.
The Dershems have allowed feral cats to live on the property because they take care of mice that carry ticks. The Dershems have both gotten Lyme disease. The mice get ticks from deer, and if the mice are not taken care of, they spread the ticks to other animals like dogs. However, raccoons, as Jeff said, have an affinity for kittens.
“It can be gruesome,” Jeff said.
Restoring and expanding an old home
The Dershems try to live in moderation to keep the land, streams and animals as they are.
The land is registered as a preservation property. It is restricted from any major land development. The preserved status does allow for one additional house to be built. The Dershems never attempted to have their existing home deemed historical, so they could add and make improvements to it over the years.
When they bought the property about 20 years ago, the homes on it, including theirs, needed severe rehabilitation.
“It took five-and-a-half years to build,” Jeff said. “We repurposed as we had to take certain buildings down. If there were floorboards or ceiling boards or roof boards or porch boards or siding boards that we could repurpose, we did that.”
“Out of respect for the animal, we do not harvest for the sake of harvesting.”Jeff Dershem, one of the property owners
For the front porch, the Dershems sourced wood from bleachers formerly used at J. Birney Crum Stadium. The school replaced the old wooden bleachers with metal. It turns out the original wooden stands were made out of old-growth Douglas fir dating back centuries, the Dershems said. The wood is also used in the office because they liked it so much.
All the stone in the home has come from the fields and streams on the property.
The main home where Deb and Jeff live was modeled to look old despite being mostly new.
“We started in 2001. We started taking it apart, and we finished in 2006, and we were here for about 18 months, and we had a catastrophic fire,” Jeff said. “It was Easter Sunday, and we were going to do a deep-fried turkey. I have done 30 of them. I went out and lit the fire, but I didn't even get the turkey in the fire yet. The regulator on the propane tank failed and blew the oil inside the container all over the house. It was 5 o'clock on Easter Sunday. Where do you think all the firemen were? Eatin’ dinner.”
The Dershems lost the roof and had to rebuild their kitchen all over again.
The house is wood-heated — the Dershems chop wood to heat a 1,757-gallon water tank that pipes hot water through the flooring to warm the basement, the first and second floors. In the winter, they wake up warm with no heating bill.
They cook in a gigantic fireplace — Deb said their grandkids love making hamburgers and hot dogs — and the house flows with an open-concept design.
“We didn't want it to look like you had a house added on to a house added on to a house," Deb said. "That’s what normal farmhouses do. What we did is when we brought the masons in – when we replaced the windows – you can’t tell that they made them bigger or smaller or put in a window or door instead.”
The main house appears to mix both old and new. Jeff likes a traditional look, so the front of the house has a historical perspective. Deb likes a contemporary look, so the back of the house has large, clear windows and A-pitch roofing. There are skylights in the kitchen, with a natural stone wood-fired oven and wooden cabinets sourced from the land. The sunken living room contains a large, open space for gathering around the fireplace.
Some of the games that the Dershems (mostly Deb) have hunted hang on the walls in the living room and office.
You can find many uses on 231 acres, and the Dershems have diversified. They train hunting dogs on the land and rent tracts to neighboring farmers to raise soybeans and sometimes corn. The couple also grows and pickles their own vegetables, makes maple syrup in the winter and jars sauces.
They have also held birthday parties, political fundraisers, baptisms and weddings in scenic settings.
Selling a property — and a lifestyle
Selling the property comes with a few challenges. For one, banks tend to want to provide housing loans for properties that have fewer than 10 acres – what Deb says you would find with a typical home. At more than 200 acres, banks want to categorize the property as farmland, which requires different types of loans.
Cliff Lewis works at Coldwell Banker Hearthside Realtors in Allentown and specializes in buying and selling historic homes in the Lehigh Valley. With a property like the Dershems', he said, banks want to value the home and not so much the land.
“So let's pretend you have a 1,200-square-foot Cape Cod on 50 acres, and you want $1 million dollars because of the land," Lewis said. "The bank is going to tell that buyer, 'Hey the house isn't worth a million dollars. The land might be but we don't lend money on the land. We lend money on the house.’”
Lewis said that typically when people buy historic homes, they tend to want to buy another. The Dershems fit that category.
They are looking to move to Virginia, where they might buy a beachfront home. They have visions of an old-world coastal roundhouse that will take less than a half hour to vacuum, as opposed to the three-hour floor cleaning they endure now.
In the meantime, they are selling the Zionsville home in the hopes that someone will want to fix the remaining properties they have not been able to get to.
The Dershems had a family looking to buy but were concerned about their older parents being unable to make certain steps in the living room.
Another buyer was interested and had the Dershems take the property off the market, but they said the deal fell through.
Mostly, the Dershems are looking for someone who appreciates the work that goes into maintaining and nurturing a place like the one they have.
“The difficulty and the beauty of selling the home [are] knowing what you have invested in it," Jeff said.
