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CURTIS BASHAWhad never used a machete before.
In 2007, he and Will Riccio, his husband and business partner, bought 62 briar-choked acres of farmland in West Cape May, N.J. Four decades of neglect stood between them and their dream: to live in a farmhouse, with gardens to supply Bashaw’s Cape Resorts hotels. There were no roads. Mercurial marshes swelled and vanished. Foxes and coyotes prowled the woods and brambles.
“It felt like one of those sad movies in the Dust Bowl where this family’s staking their claim and the wind just blows everything away,” Bashaw says. But