Ski champ Bode Miller’s family buys N.H. property for organic farming

SUGAR HILL, N.H. – A foundation set up by world skiing champion Bode Miller has bought a 630-acre farm once owned by another skiing family, and will use it to promote organic farming.

The foundation, Turtle Ridge Farm LLC, is operated by members of Miller’s family. It bought the Ski Hearth Farm last week, which includes working farmland, woods and frontage on the Gale River.

The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests holds a conservation easement on part of the property that protects it from development and limits its use to farming and forestry.

“It’s going to stay the same. We’re just going to promote organic farming,” said Kyla Miller-White, the skier’s sister and a member of Turtle Ridge’s board. Bode Miller attended Carrabassett Valley Academy in Maine.

Miller-White said the family plans to expand farming operations and keep a seasonal farm stand open while working toward organic certification.

She said they hope Luther Kinney will stay on as farm manager. Kinney, who has managed the farm for the past four years, is president of Rasa Yoga, the farm’s former owner.

Rasa Yoga bought the farm in 2002 for use as a yoga center. It made extensive renovations to the 1850s farmhouse and began the transition to organic farming.

Before that, Ski Hearth Farm was owned by Sel and Paulie Hannah, who bought it in 1938. They farmed it in summer and hosted lodgers who wanted to ski at nearby Cannon Mountain in the winter.

Sel Hannah, who died in 1991, was a native of Berlin who made the Olympic Nordic ski team in 1940. He never got a chance to compete because the games were canceled due to World War II.

He went on to found Sno Engineering, a ski area development company that helped construct trails at Cannon Mountain and other ski areas in the region. He also was a member of the Cannon Mountain ski patrol.

One of the most challenging trails on Cannon Mountain is named “Paulie’s Folly,” after his wife.

Paulie Hannah, once one of the most competitive women skiers in the region, contracted polio in 1949, when she was 32. She remained devoted to the sport, however, doing fundraising for the local Franconia Ski Club and the Eastern Division of the U.S. Ski Association.

Among her friends was Bode Miller’s grandmother, Peg Kenney. Paulie Hannah died in 2001.

Joan Hannah, the eldest of the Hannahs’ four children, skied for the U.S. Olympic team in 1960 and 1964, and won a bronze medal in the giant slalom event at the 1962 World Championships.

After teaching skiing in Colorado for many years, she returned to New Hampshire after her father’s death. She managed the farm until it was sold in 2002 and continued to work there through last summer.

Miller’s family hasn’t decided yet whether to change the name of the farm. When Miller-White found out it was for sale, her main concern was to keep it going so the community would have a source of fresh, locally grown produce.

“There’s a lot of family history there,” she said. “We all wanted it to stay the same.”