DERRY, N.H. - Robert Frost was a farmer, schoolteacher and young father when he lived in a house here and sat at the kitchen table to write some of his early poems.

Warmed by a large black stove, his chair looks out on a yard that slopes gently toward the woods. Follow the well-worn path into the trees and find the stone wall memorialized in his "Mending Wall." A small bridge crosses Hyla Brook, as Frost described it, "run out of song and speed."

What visitors may miss as they take in the sights and sounds that inspired so much of Frost's work is the mounting damage to the historic home.

Moisture, termites and powder post beetles are eroding the foundation of the traditional New England house and barn, where the four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning poet lived for the first decade of the 20th century. If the destruction goes unchecked, future poetry lovers may never get a chance to see the home.

Owned by the state, the Robert Frost Farm is one of many historic sites falling into disrepair as the self-funded state parks system struggles with shortfalls. The parks system had a $7 million budget last year, but took in only $5.5 million in revenue, according to Allison McLean, its director.

Though states divide oversight for parks and historic sites differently, New Hampshire is unique in funding both through user fees alone, according to state Sen. Bob Odell, who leads a committee studying the state park system.

Famous names

The hurt has been felt all over New Hampshire.

At the famous orator Daniel Webster's birthplace in Franklin, visitors can walk the grounds, but there are no longer tours. One building has been ruled unsafe to enter. In Hillsborough, the siding is rotting at the Franklin Pierce homestead, the childhood home of the nation's 14th president.

"Parks being a self-funded agency, and to have the historic buildings included, is almost a formula for failure," McLean said. She said her agency values the state's historic legacy but just can't keep up with the needs.

Years in the making, a backlog of maintenance and repairs now totals $1 million for state historic sites and $3 million for the park system overall, she said.

The state parks system is responsible for more than 20 historic buildings and monuments, but surely the jewel in the crown is the Frost Farm.

Though Frost and his family occupied the farm between 1900 and 1911, his observations and experiences here rooted even his later work. In 1924, Frost won his first Pulitzer for the book "New Hampshire."

"This place was just so important to him," said Bill Gleed, who manages the farm. "He wanted this to be the place where people came to learn about him."

The state acquired the farm in 1965, two years after Frost died, and spent 10 years re-creating it as it was in the poet's time. With help from Frost's eldest daughter, furnishings and wallpaper were carefully chosen to show how the family lived. The parents' bedroom holds an original family crib. The family china is featured in the dining room. The original soapstone sink was rescued and still has the grooves created by the Frosts as they sharpened their knives.

The farm attracts more than 3,000 paying visitors each year from all over the world. But at $7 per ticket, it's hardly enough to maintain buildings that are more than 120 years old.

As needs outstripped means, the farm's trustees started fundraising. Their efforts kept the farm open to the public five days a week this summer instead of just on weekends. A new security system was installed after troublemakers broke in and spent a night partying inside the house.

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."