After he went to the University in Vermont, Peter Gregg worked as an agricultural reporter for a local newspaper and then fell into a nicheveld: he became an maple syrup farmer.
“I got into suggestion by a friend and neighbor who invited me to hang around with him while he cooked juice all day,” said Mr. Gregg. “I like to be outside in nature, I love trees and I have a bad sweet tooth, so it was a perfect match.”
He soon bought a thousand-tree Maple Orchard on the border of Vermont-New York, and then he founded a trading publication in 1999, the Maple News, which still prints 11 editions a year. “Every year we produce enough syrup to fill a hot tub,” he said about the farm. “It costs 40 liters of juice to make a liter of syrup.”
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More recently, Mr. GREGG further leaned in his writing career. His first book, “The Sugar Rush: A Memoir of Wild Dreams, Budding Bromance and Making Maple Siroop”, was published last year. He is working on a novel, with the title ‘Pancake Cowboy’.
Over the years, Mr. Gregg, now 58 and divorced, would often go to New York City and his son and daughter – now in the twenty – for visits. Both finally went to the university in the city.
“A small town in the middle of the forest was not a place for an empty nest freedom,” he said. “I needed a shock. I wanted to reinvent myself as a writer. The publishing house is located in New York and there are so many resources for writers.”
He sold his house in Greenwich, NY, (pronounced as “Green Witch”) to a few from Brooklyn – “We exchanged place,” he said – and two years ago a studio in Carnegie Hill, to the Upper East Side. It was more affordable than other parts of Manhattan and close to the urban forest of Central Park, in case he was homesick for the forest.
“Going from a considerable house to a studio was an adjustment, but I needed a beach head and knew from the start I wanted to buy in Manhattan,” he said.
The studio, in a small co-op building, had one cupboard, endless squeaks of trucks that deliver to a nearby food company and cockroaches. “I’d rather see a bear than a cockroach,” he said.
He had the opportunity to buy that cooperative unit and refused. But he wanted to stay in Carnegie Hill, and he said he wanted his new house to look ‘New Yorky’, which meant him for a bit outside and brick in it. His budget for a bedroom varied up to $ 600,000; In that area of Manhattan that meant a cooperative.
Lay -out was important. After living in the tight studio, Mr. wanted Gregg a kind of corridor and a bathroom that was centrally located, not and its own.
He joined Leanne Stella, a recognized seller at Brown Harris Stevens. “Renting first is good for someone from the city because you become realistic about how people live and the amount of space they get,” she said.
The hunt took much longer than he expected. “Peter had very specific criteria,” said Mrs. Stella. “He wanted to walk to Whole Foods. There were points when I thought he would never buy anything.”
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