News from the Minute Man National Historical Park
The Minute Man National Historic Park is currently developing ways to increase the amount of agricultural activity within the park and expand the agricultural interpretation and education that is offered to the over 1.2 million visitors who spend time at the park each year. The Farm-Based Education Association will work collaboratively to develop programming and agricultural activity at the park and to connect the park to the larger farm-based education community.
Earlier this summer, the park and potential partners began exploring a concept for an integrated management program for farmland in the park that would combine productive and sustainable agricultural endeavors in a historic cultural landscape with interpretive and educational elements. The working title for this concept is “Battle Road Farms Project”. This concept will be tested and refined in the next several months as part of the park’s current management planning effort for the Battle Road Unit of the park.
This farming program would maintain the open farmscape of the Park, giving visitors a more authentic visual experience of conditions at the time of the battle – April 19, 1775. The farmscape was important to the way the battle unfolded and its characteristics aided or impeded troop movements and deployments. The nature of the colonists’ farm culture was also important to the reasons that New Englanders rebelled against British imperial rule, and to the way they organized their resistance.
Agricultural Activity Currently at the Park
Community Farmers Growing on Leased Park Land:
For generations prior to the creation of the park in 1959, Concord farmers cultivated and protected the ancient fields now protected within the national park. More recently, local farmers have continued that tradition as part of the park’s agricultural program. Several farmers now grow corn, hay, and other crops throughout the park.
Maplewood Farm Stand:
This farmstand provides visitors and local residents with fresh farm products. In the future, the park may provide visitors and local residents with additional fresh food options through additional farmstands.
The Farm School and the Big Ox Farm:
Farmer Peter Merrill (The Big Ox Farm), operating under the auspices of The Farm School of Athol, MA, has been farming at the park since February 2006. Peter is a trained chef who worked at Sel de La Terre in Boston before beginning his farm training at Maggie's Farm at the Farm School. Maggie’s Farm is the practical farm-training program providing a year-long residential training program and support for post-graduate work (at the park for example) for adults in organic agriculture.
The Big Ox Farm is a 30-acre diversified farm within the park. 27 acres are devoted to a small herd of Scotch Highlanders, Irish Dexters, Big Jim, the Gloucester Line back Big Ox, along with Matilda and Sadie, the Tamworth sows, 35 Border Lester & Dorset Ewes. We are also growing a three acre market garden featuring salad greens, garlic, hericot vert, beets, carrots, potatoes and flowers.
The Sheep Grazing Study:
As you walk the Battle Road Trail, you may notice sheep grazing at Fiske Hill and Farwell Jones field. Minute Man National Historical Park, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts, is conducting research to control the spread of invasive plant species. In this pursuit, we have set up experimental plots to test whether grazing sheep throughout the season, grazing them a few times during the season, mowing, or some combination can best control the take-over of our fields by invasive plants.
Many people want to know why invasive plants are a problem. What makes a plant invasive is its ability to utilize the resources so well that it can out-compete native species and become the predominant species growing in an area. Whether the invasive plants at MMNHP arrived here with the colonists as “ornamentals” for garden arrangements or more recently by accident in the shipments of products from overseas, once they found a new habitat to their liking, they never go away. The invasive plants that we see in the fields of MMNHP such as Asiatic bittersweet, glossy buckthorn, common buckthorn, purple loosestrife and multiflora rose may have no natural predators or pathogens here. Some invasive plants are able to change the soil composition so that it is easier for them to grow but harder for native species. The success of invasive plants means the decline of our native plants and a loss of biodiversity.
Often when we look at a field or forest we do not think about all the other species that may rely on the plants we see growing there. Insects, reptiles and herbivorous mammals may need a particular plant or plant group for food or shelter. However, if an invasive plant establishes itself in an area, it may help to cause the local extinction of a native species, which can greatly impact that ecosystem. Scientists have come to realize that once a species goes extinct from an area, it is difficult to get it back.
Minute Man NHP strives to preserve and interpret the scene of the 1775 battle. At that time this area was predominately open farmland, with most of it pasture. We have cleared some new growth forest and brought back sheep and cattle to better evoke the colonial era. Through the study of their effect on invasive plants, we seek to help the environment as well.
Agriculture-Focused Education and Interpretation at the Park
Jim Hollister, Ranger and interpreter at the Minute Man National Historical Park and Peter Merrill at The Big Ox Farm have developed a program called OX POWER: FARMS & FARMING IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND. This program describes how oxen were used in farming and discusses the use of commons and mixed husbandry. They have incorporated this program into this fall’s program for teachers called "1775 Immersion." This program will inform classroom teachers about ways to incorporate the park lessons into their curriculums.
Recently, 20 members of the farm-based education community met at the park for a tour of the park with Brian Donahue, professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University and author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord and Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farming and Forestry in a New England Town.
On October 18th, 40 field managers from properties of The Trustees of Reservations will be at the park to hear ways that partnerships and collaborative projects can help them with their strategic implementation of programming on their land holdings including 13 farms and 22 properties with working agricultural land.
For more information about the emerging agricultural work at the park, please contact,
Leslie Obleschuk
Chief of Interpretation and Education
Minute Man National Historical Park
174 Liberty Street
Concord, MA 01742
T: 978-318-7833, leslie_obleschuk@nps.gov
http://www.nps.gov/mima
Brooke Redmond
Executive Director
The Farm-Based Education Association
Minute Man National Historical Park
174 Liberty Street
Concord, MA 01742
T: 978.318.7827, brooke@farmbasededucation.org
www.farmbasededucation.org.