I’m sure I’m not the only Grotonite who has noticed the undeveloped land so incongrously tucked between the library and North Road, across the street from Fitch Middle School and a stone’s throw from the Dairy Queen. It looks like an old farm and I’ve always thought that it was a miracle that it had survived, un-raped, as long as it has. It looks like it will be reverting to its former life and, at least for a while, it will remain undeveloped.
A certain stretch of Route 1 in Poquonnock Bridge is known for a Dairy Queen, gas stations, mobile homes and the offices of lawyers and architects.
But a farm?
It wasn’t so strange in 1784, when Silas Burrows built a house on farmland on Fort Hill Road, long before the commercial district existed.
Now, one of Silas’ descendants, Warren Burrows, is returning the land to an earlier time, cultivating a small, sustainable farm he is calling the Groton Family Farm across from Fitch Middle School.
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Burrows envisions sheep, goats and a llama grazing in the 4-acre field. He would also grow strawberries, melons, pumpkins and vegetables to sell at local farmers’ markets in Mystic and New London, along with eggs and wool.
His goal is to join the home-grown, organic food craze that’s growing in popularity. The land has never been touched by pesticides or herbicides, he said, making it near-organic.
I know next to nothing about farming, but I’ve always thought that the land in that area would have been the most desirable farmland. It’s flat as a pancake and was probably some sort of alluvial plain, where the soil would have been richer and less stony than, for instance, at my house, which was also a farm in the 18th century. Of course, I could be completely wrong about that.
Right now, the only farm left in Groton is Whittles, which I believe confines itself to apples and pumpkins, though they sell other stuff at their farm stand.
Here’s hoping Dr. Burrows will be successful, and that we’ll be buying Groton grown produce this summer or next.
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