FROM THE FARM REPORT: MINER INSTITUTE: HOW WE GOT HERE

Readers of the Farm Report should have a fair idea of what’s happening at the Institute, in part because of the regular short articles titled “What’s Happening on the Farm”. But recent subscribers (and some long-term ones) may not know how we got here. Following is a summary of the past 100+ years of agricultural activity at what is now the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute.

William Miner was orphaned at an early age and was raised by his aunt and uncle on their 144-acre Chazy, NY farm. He moved to Chicago as a young man, and in 1891 invented and patented a greatly improved shock absorber for rail cars. He started his own business in Chicago in 1897, and soon became quite wealthy. (There were no income taxes in the U.S. until 1913.) In 1903 William Miner moved back to the family farm in Chazy, and over the next ten years built Heart’s Delight Farm.

Heart’s Delight Farm was huge and diversified, with 15,000 acres, 300 structures and 800 employees (not a misprint!). It was a very modern farm and had electric lights in the barns before there was electricity in the New York Governor’s mansion, with the power supplied by a series of hydroelectric dams that Miner built. Heart’s Delight Farm included a dairy herd as well as a wide variety of crops and farm animals including several fish farms, also a herd of American bison. The farm shipped items such as ham, sausage, eggs and other produce to restaurants and hotels in Chicago and New York City. The farm operated under William Miner’s guidance until his death in 1930, then continued on a somewhat reduced scale after his passing though there were dairy cows on the farm until the 1950s.

In 1961 Cornell University began a field crops research and demonstration project at Miner Institute, using 40 acres of centrally located tile-drained land. This project continues to this day, with financial support from the Institute. In 1970 Miner Institute and Cornell signed a 10-year cooperative agreement which included the construction of a 160-cow free-stall dairy barn on the Miner Institute farmstead. This program continued under the management of Cornell University until the summer of 1979, when the operation of the dairy and crops programs was transferred to Miner Institute.

Since the late 1960s Miner Institute’s dairy and field crops enterprises have grown considerably, now over 500 dairy cows in modern free-stall barns with sufficient cropland to support the milking herd and young stock. The Institute’s agricultural research program has grown from essentially nothing in the early 1970s to encompass a wide variety of dairy- and crops-oriented projects with the professional staff needed to carry out this research. In the past half-century Miner Institute has evolved the support of Cornell University research at the Institute to having its own diversified and practically-based research program.

— Ev Thomas

ethomas@oakpointny.com