Gilfillan Farm hosts ‘heart bombing’
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Margaret Carlson shows the interestingly configured heart she’s in the process of coloring.
Anastasia Heins Borsh gets ready to toast a marshmallow on the campfire that was lit for the "heart bombing" event.
Gary Smyda and Haley Roberts enjoy an afternoon at Gilfillan Farm.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Jamie Lynn Davis shows the heart on which she wrote.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Youngsters toast marshmallows during the “heart bomb” event at Gilfillan Farm in Upper St. Clair.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
“Heart bomb” at Gilfillan Farm’s entrance off Orr Road in Upper St. Clair.
Aubrey Heitman writes on a heart to place on a Gilfillan Farm fence.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
The trail that rings Gilfillan Farm also receives “heart bomb” love.
Russell Heitman contends with a sticky marshmallow.
Harry Funk/The Almanac
Hearts adorn a Gilfillan Farm fence.
John Carlson warms up while toasting a marshmallow.
Drew Heitman enjoys a toasted marshmallow.
Anastasia Heins Borsh, left, and Margaret Carlson have fun in the snow at Gilfillan Farm.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the fence at the entrance to Gilfillan Farm was decorated with a series of paper hearts bearing inspirational messages.
Inspired by a National Trust for Historic Preservation project, Haley Roberts organized a Feb. 13 “heart bombing” event at the farm, with hot chocolate, a campfire and marshmallows for toasting to help keep everyone warm.
“The ‘heart bombing’ movement is all over the nation for small organizations that want to raise awareness in the community about a historical place or something that might be at risk, or doesn’t have a lot of attention brought to it all the time,” she said.
“It’s a way to show the community that there are people here who care about this place and want to see it continue to be maintained and preserved.”
Roberts serves on the board of the Historical Society of Upper St. Clair, which preserves and operates the Gilfillan property, located along Route 19 near South Hills Village, as a working farm.
“It’s always important to our roots as a community and where we came from,” she said. “We were primarily agrarian at one point, and it’s always nice to remember that, even though we have the mall and all these developed places around.”
About 15 acres remain of the 135 on which the Gilfillan family established a farm in the mid-1800s. Descendants lived there until Margaret Gilfillan died in 2001 at age 100, leaving the property and its buildings to the historical society.
“You can walk through a building and touch the walls, and realize that people who were important in your community lived here,” Roberts said. “And it kind of allows you to connect with history in a way that reading it in a book or hearing someone talk about it really can’t.”
Now a Mt. Lebanon resident, she is a 2010 graduate of Upper St. Clair High School.
“I was on the cross country team, and we would come here to practice and run on the trail,” she said about the township-owned loop around the farm.
Otherwise, she pretty much was unaware of the property’s significance, and she’s not alone in that regard.
“A lot of people in the community drive by all the time and don’t really know it’s even here,” Roberts said. “So it’s nice to have events like this for people to come and see the space and interact with it.”
For more information, visit www.hsusc.org.