Wearing a tailored charcoal suit and silk rep tie, Thad Bench looks out of place against the barren, wintertime fields surrounding his Kent County house. Coming home for lunch, he greets his wife, Renee, in the kitchen and then stares out the window.

“I think I’m going to go climb into the blind and hunt for the rest of the day,” he announces with a sly grin. “You know, go hide.” While originally an Indiana farm boy, such a statement proves that his transformation into a true Eastern Shoreman is nearly complete.
The Benches had lived in Annapolis for fourteen years before finding their ideal dwelling on the Shore, an eighteenth-century farmhouse cum dairy farm called Worth’s Folly. But it was in such a sad state of disrepair that they almost let it go. “We knew it would be a huge undertaking, but we kept coming back to it,” says Thad, who, with his wife, bought the house in 2003. “We must have driven past it a dozen times, visiting it at sunset and early in the morning. I thought it was as right as rain.” 
Built circa 1780 in Flemish bond brick, Worth’s Folly was patented to a John Worth in 1687 and originally included 1,036 acres. The oldest part of the house contains the living room, dining room, and den, all true to the authentic Colonial vernacular, with low ceilings and diminutive square footage. The architectural highlight of the space, decorated in neutral-toned silk and crushed velvet fabrics, is the paneled fireplace wall, which embeds an enclosed stairway and two closets.
The view from the living room stretches into the adjoining dining room, made elegant with a working fireplace, nineteenth-century French landscape paintings, a mahogany table, and smatterings of family silver. For the Benches, rabid entertainers, this room, which contains four original, exposed ceiling beams, is custom-made for winter dinner parties. “I personally enjoy entertaining when you can actually have a conversation and spend the time getting to know someone,” says Thad. “And that’s easier to do at a dinner table. It’s an intimate space, and the scale of the room brings sincerity to it.”
The kitchen wing, incorporated into the footprint in 1970 by previous owners, represents the newest part of the house. The Benches refurbished it in 2007, gutting the old space and adding wide-planked pine flooring and new cabinetry and appliances—all requirements of Renee, an avid cook. The wall of windows looks out over the two-acre pond and bordering soybean, winter wheat, and corn fields. The honking of the resident Canada geese provides gentle background noise, often drowned out by the sound of Duke, the male yellow Labrador, snoring in his favorite corner of the kitchen.
With two kids, three dogs, two horses, three cats, three peacocks, twenty-five rare-breed chickens, and a duck named Chuck, there’s always plenty of action on the farm. In fact, until relocating to Chestertown last year, Thad’s marketing company, Benchworks, was housed in the barn across from the main house.
For a break from the chaos, the couple decided to create a family retreat in the 100-year-old granary. The first step in the renovation process was to clean out the hay, evict the colony of pigeons, and power wash the all-wood interior. “On the weekends, we cleaned it out, piece by piece,” recalls Thad. “It was a massive undertaking.”
They transformed the roomy grain bins into three seating areas, adding a white sofa banquette in the center space, a piano in the other, and Thad and Thad Jr.‘s hunting gear everywhere in between. A wood stove heats the space in the winter, while the sweet-smelling smoke from Thad’s pipe perfects the hunting-lodge ambience. “We spend Christmas morning out here,” says Renee. “We started the tradition the year we moved in. Some winters we’re out here in our coats and gloves, but it’s worth it.”
“It’s a great place to retreat,” adds Thad, “to think or take a nap or read. We’ve had some epic dove hunts on the farm, and afterward we come back here to drink wine and listen to music loudly while not bothering anybody. There’s been a lot of dancing, a lot of laughter in here.”
For the Benches, adjusting to country life has been easy since both were raised on farms. “I’m a big space person,” says Renee, who grew up in rural Pennsylvania. “I love having elbowroom. Having the space is wonderful, and being in the country with all the animals is fabulous. But I did have to train myself to think that anything under an hour was close.”
“Renee adjusted much more easily than I,” admits Thad. “I am very social, and I miss my friends from Annapolis. But they come to visit and now we also have some good new friends. To live in a place this rural, you have to be really comfortable in your own skin.”