Volunteer mowers keeping up appearances at East Farm

Since 1938 when URI acquired it, East Farm has been the site of countless agricultural experimental endeavors ranging from raising improved lines of livestock  to egg-laying competitions, from disease resistant apple trees to today’s quest for pest-resistant hemlocks.

But nowhere in the 79-acre farm’s history has it ever been described as a park and yet thanks to the dedication of a handful of Master Gardeners, sections of the farm are beginning to resemble just that.

The Master Gardeners are the volunteer mowers of many acres of the farm, especially in the crabapple and apple orchards and now in the blueberry research area.

While URI’s Master Gardeners are not supposed to be maintainers of gardens (as outreach they will advise and help community projects get under way but long-term maintenance is a no-no) but there are exceptions when it comes to URI-owned property. The Master Gardeners help out at the URI Botanical Garden, the President’s Garden and most notably at East Farm and the Gardner Agronomy Farm.

East Farm is where a lot of Master Gardener activities are based and in recognition of the fact that the College of the Environment and Life Sciences allows the Master Gardeners free use of sections of the farm, the volunteers have reciprocated over the years to help improve the farm.

One of the activities is providing mowing of areas that are not serviced by URI Lands and Grounds.

Lands and Grounds takes care of the upper portion of East Farm—the portion seen from Route 108—but that is only one section of the sprawling property. Down the hill and tucked behind tree lines lie the apple and crabapple orchards and the blueberry trial area. All of these areas have grass and mowing them is highly labor intensive.

Enter the Master Gardeners.

One of the annual tasks they have done now for several years is prune the orchards. The pruning of apple trees is essential to keep the harvests up to snuff and the pruning activities are considered both as maintenance and educational in scope-especially for new Master Gardeners.

Harold Morpeth, a long-time Master Gardener headed up the pruning operations each winter and it soon became apparent that to maintain good access to the orchards, mowing was necessary—not only for convenience but also safety—deer ticks love tall grass.

Using URI’s machines, a couple of them new, the Master Gardeners volunteered to keep up with the mowing—not an easy task because of the close planting of the trees.

The crabapple orchard was the biggest challenge. Close spacing of the trees and low-branches meant slow and dangerous mowing. Following suggestions by Dr. Steve Alm and Dr. Larry Englander, the Master Gardeners started on a pruning program in the crabapple orchard—more than 200 trees and considered the biggest crabapple collection east of the Mississippi.

Among the pruners was Earl Randall who took the Master Gardener training in 2008. A retired Army colonel, Randall plus Morpeth and others embarked on a training regimen that occupied them in the cold weather months. Things picked up when Rich Horvath, a retired farm manager from the Connecticut Agricultural Research Station joined them with his expertise. With Horvath, who eventually became an Honorary Lifetime Master Gardener, the pruning progressed throughout the crabapple orchard, taking out low and dangerous limbs and eradicating invasives and yet maintaining the aesthetic forms of the trees.

Last winter the pruning and clean-up efforts were extended to the adjacent pinetum (an arboretum for conifers).

Even with all the pruning, mowing the orchards is still labor intensive. Randall, who has more than 1,000 volunteer hours, says a typical mowing session takes about 5-6 hours, non-stop. He prefers to use a Toro machine that has a sliding deck to get under the crabapple trees.

Others on the mowing team are Richard Jacques and Gerry Guay who prefer the new gravely machines. (Morpeth is now concentrating his efforts at agronomy helping Dr. Rebecca Brown).

Jacques has come home, in a manner of speaking. He is a URI alum with a degree  in  Natural Resources and worked 32 and a half years for the state Department of Environmental Management. His last position was as regional park manager for state properties in the Charlestown/Westerly area. He took the Master Gardener training earlier this year and volunteer to be a mower with Randall.

The third member of the team is Gerry Guay, a Master Gardener since 2006,  who responded earlier this year to the call for more mowers. Guay is a retired shop teacher who worked in the Burrillville school system.

Besides volunteering at East Farm, all three men are busy elsewhere. Randall works part-time helping a small firm with shipping. Jacques works part time as a bartender on the Martha’s Vineyard fast ferry and Guay also did work at the Country View Country Club.

All three said they truly enjoy working at East Farm. Randall takes care of the crabapple orchard which is not fenced in—as a result he sees all sorts of wildlife running through the area, including, once, a wolf. Jacques and Guay mow in the fenced-in apple and blueberry areas (plus some adjacent sections). The fences are there to keep out deer. Most of the wildlife they see consists of woodchucks which are legend at East Farm.

This past year was a phenomenal growing year for everything including grass and so the men said they had to mow on a weekly basis up until recently. The mowing can be tricky at times, says Jacques because of rocks, steep slopes and woodchuck holes.

But despite the demands on their time, all three said they plan to be back in the mowers’ saddles again in 2011.

Says Jacques, “Earl says he wants this place to look like a park and we plan to help him.”

- By Rudi Hempe  -  CELS News Editor