Agriculture

Corey-Bourquin Field

On Barrett’s Mill Road, thanks to the Corey family, the Land Trust owns two hayfields. Dan Pickard has been farming for more than 30 years in and around Concord, and has been haying the Corey-Bourquin Field since before the Land Trust acquired the land. His farm (Pickard Farm) is located in Littleton. The Pickard Farm installs silt fences and provides erosion control solutions using straw wattles and hay bales made from the farmed hay. They also produce quality cut and split seasoned firewood, pumpkins, and premium horse hay.

Hartwell Meadow

Hartwell Meadow has been farmed since the late 1600’s and was part of a productive farming area in northwest Concord from the 17th to the 20th century. Under Land Trust ownership since 2017, Hartwell Meadow is currently hayed by Carlisle farmer Mark Duffy. More than 30 years ago, while farming in New Hampshire, Duffy answered an ad by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a dairy magazine that put out a call for a farmer. Duffy and his family now run Great Brook Farm in neighboring Carlisle. Great Brook Farm is a State Park and part of the Cabot Co-operative (Agri-Mark), and Duffy is on the board of directors. The farm currently has approximately 200 cows, including Holstein milkers, calves, bred heifers and one bull. Each milking cow produces over 80 pounds of milk per day. The original farm had a tie-stall barn where cows were tethered and hand-milked. Over ten years ago, through the benefits of a stimulus package, Duffy installed the first robotic milker in Massachusetts. Visitors to the park enjoy a modern, state-of-the-art, dairy farm experience – and a scoop of ice cream at the seasonal farmstand.

Nutrition is critical to the cows’ health and production. Duffy has a nutritionist who blends a special diet for the cows, a mix of cut grass (haylage), chopped corn plants (silage), apple pomace, brewer’s grain from breweries, canola by-product, cornmeal, and minerals. The corn provides energy and the grass provides protein. While there are 80 tillable acres within the state park, Duffy farms more than 250 acres outside the park at five sites in surrounding towns, including Hartwell Meadow. At Hartwell Meadow, Duffy harvests grass for the feed, generally cutting the grass three to four times a season using a no-till method when reseeding is needed.

Hubbard Brook Farmfield and Soutter Field

In 1922, Floyd and Amy Verrill moved into Concord and purchased the Carrigan Farm on Sudbury Road, which was located where part of Nashawtuc Country Club is today. Starting with a small herd of Guernsey cows and milk routes in Lexington and Concord, they developed a successful dairy business. In the early 1930’s, Floyd Verrill became the first in Concord to pasteurize milk.

Steve Verrill was born not long after. In 1957, he graduated from Cornell University with a degree in agriculture. He returned to Concord and stayed in the dairy business through the 1980’s, but milk prices were no longer keeping pace with inflation and it was difficult to make ends meet. Verrill was the last dairy farmer in Concord, aside from the prison, and he finally sold his herd in 1990.

As Verrill will tell you, farming is like crossing a wide river, stepping on one stone at a time to get across. You can’t always see what’s ahead, but you just keep going. Verrill and his family stepped forward and into the produce business that they are now well-known for. The business grew from a roadside tent that Verrill’s wife, Joan, staffed into the modern farm stand in operation today. Their daughter Jennifer developed the baking and catering side of the business.

Perhaps most significantly, Verrill helped to pass the Massachusetts Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program (APR) in 1977 that enables farmers to protect their lands from development. Twenty-eight acres of the Land Trust’s Miller Farm are protected under the APR. Some of the fields that Steve farms are owned by the Land Trust – a part of Miller Farm, Hubbard Brook Farmfield and Soutter Field.

Kazmaier Land

The Kazmaier Land consists of 16 acres of actively-farmed fields. The property was gifted to the Land Trust in 1979-1981 by Patricia and Richard “Dick” Kazmaier. It was their express wish that the land “continue its farming use as long as reasonably possible.” Today, Eric Nelson continues to fulfill that desire. Nelson is a 4th generation farmer whose farming roots go back to 1896 and the Christopherson family. Their farm began on School Street in Acton and is now located on Parker Street, where the Cucurbit Farm stand and fields are situated. Although the farm stand is in Acton, Nelson lives in Concord. His nephew, Max Porten, is the 5th generation of the family to engage in farming.

Nelson’s father, Alan, was introduced to Dick Kazmaier through one of Kazmaier’s employees. Alan then began farming squashes and pumpkins in the field, which the Nelson family continued after the Kazmaiers conserved the land. Almost twenty years ago, Eric Nelson switched to growing sweet corn, which he now grows exclusively in his fields. The Kazmaier Land is one of four properties he harvests (65 acres in total) and is one of two fields he works in Concord.

At the suggestion of John Bemis, a director of the Concord Open Land Foundation (the Land Trust’s affiliate organization) and author of Concord’s Farming Bylaw, Nelson has implemented no-till farming methods and is the first in the area to try this with a sweet
corn crop. The benefits of no-till farming include a decrease in soil erosion and an increase in water conservation, retention of organic matter in the soil, and nutrient cycling. Additionally, a byproduct of the process will be a harvest of the cover crop, Triticale, a hybrid of wheat and rye, that his nephew plans to feed to his cattle. (Max Porten presently farms about 2 acres of hay at the Kazmaier field.) As a life-long farmer, Nelson has no plans to retire. Following in the footsteps of friends and colleagues before him, he hopes to drive his tractor into his nineties.

Miller Farm and Garfield Road

In 2001, the Poutasse family donated the 52-acre Douglas and Adele Miller Farm. This gift was in honor of their Miller relatives who originally purchased the land in the early 1900’s. At the time of the donation, Chip Poutasse and Steve Verrill were farming the property and have continued to do so under the Land Trust’s ownership.

Poutasse’s primary base of farming operations is nearby at Brigham Farm, where he grew up when his mother (a Poutasse) married George Brigham. Farming in the Brigham family dates back to the 1820’s when John Brigham first purchased the farm situated on the Fitchburg Turnpike. Poutasse and his sister, Jane Brigham Bailey, are the sixth generation to operate the Concord farm and farm stand.

At Miller Farm, Poutasse began farming sweet corn and pumpkins part-time in the 1970’s. He took over from his step-father, who had begun renting the land during World War II, specializing in sweet corn. Today, his son Sam Poutasse, who grew up picking the farm’s vegetables, has been cultivating grape vines on a portion of the Miller Farm field since 2017.