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Laura Burnham, chairwoman of the trustees, says it has been upsetting to many, including three of Frost's granddaughters who are honorary trustees, to see the house deteriorate despite their best efforts. Rain is entering the house down the sides of the chimney. A temporary brace has been placed in the barn. What look like tiny piles of sand mark the work of the powder post beetles.

"Self-funding just doesn't work," Burnham said. "It looks to people coming in like New Hampshire doesn't value its historic properties."

The trustees last year took the issue to U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, who added $300,000 to a federal transportation bill to fix the foundation of the house and barn. Passed by the House, the issue goes before the Senate this fall.

Burnham hopes the money will address the site's worst problems.

But it won't solve the long-term mismatch of having historic treasures managed by a state agency whose income depends on the number of visitors to the state's parks.

A plan for the future

Odell's study committee recently proposed creating a Bureau of Historic Sites within the parks division, paid for by tax revenues rather than user fees. The committee also recommends raising $20 million through bond sales. Half would pay for upgrades to the state's big money-maker, Hampton Beach. The other half would go for deferred maintenance and strategic planning at other state parks and historic sites.

Burnham and McLean support the plan.

At the farm, Gleed, an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University, shows off the room where three of Frost's children were born, where the man in the poem "The Death of the Hired Man" died, and a replica of the kitchen telephone where Frost, born in San Francisco, absorbed the rhythms of New England speech by eavesdropping in the era of the party line.

The Frost Farm may not bring in the money that Hampton Beach does, but no one is suggesting it doesn't have value.

"We get a lot of people who are here on a sort of pilgrimage," Gleed said. "It means a great deal to the people who come here. ... I've had people overwrought with emotion, break down. People connect emotionally to the writing."

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