It’s All About The Berries––

Controversy, History Entwined In Borough Neighborhood

By Dottie Evans

The recent announcement by Sandy Hook organic farmers Jim and Susanne Shortt that they are planning to grow blueberries on a portion of property owned by Mrs Shortt off Wendover Road has produced a storm of reaction from alarmed neighbors.

Not only are the residents of Wendover Road and The Boulevard disturbed at the prospect of any tree cutting in the quiet woods they have come to enjoy seeing out their back windows, they are uneasy about what effects the proposed blueberry nursery might have on their neighborhood.

They worry about damage to sensitive wetlands that might occur in the process of converting an acre of woods to blueberry bushes, since the Shortts are hoping to use the land as an adjunct to their already established organic farm and nursery business.

Mr Shortt says their intentions are very straightforward, that his wife has been paying taxes on the land, and now they would like to farm it.

“We would clear and plant an acre with about 2,000 blueberry bushes, bare root,” said Mr Shortt, adding, “it will take at least five years for them to mature. It doesn’t happen overnight. Of course, we would have to build up the rows and there would be strips of mowed grass in between, and we would eventually add a mesh cover over the bushes to keep the birds out.

“With organically grown produce, you don’t use pesticides or fertilizers. We plan to leave a natural area as a buffer zone around the plantings. And we’ll need to build an access road into the property.”

They own plenty of frontage on Wendover for that, he added.

Following a meeting with the town Conservation Commission (the town’s inland wetlands agency) on August 27, the Shortts made plans to walk the site with an official from the Department of Agriculture on September 4. They will be in touch with the commissioners regarding their findings and they hope the matter can be resolved.

But this is not the first time that controversy rooted in change has stirred up the Wendover/Boulevard neighborhood. Two longtime residents remember a time in the 1940s, when much of the land was owned and farmed by Mrs Shortt’s great-grandfather, George Beers. They remember when Wendover Road used to be called “Carcass Lane” –– not a pretty name, but pretty accurate in describing what once went on down there.

 

Butchering Cows On Carcass Lane

Picking Berries On The Boulevard

Mary Pat (Carroll) Brigham, who lives now in Montpelier, Vt., wrote The Bee recently concerning her memories of living on The Boulevard in 1940.

“I remember [The Boulevard] with a great deal of affection. It was the year I got my bike, and my parents were too busy to keep as close a watch as usual on me and my brother. We had an enormous amount of fun, especially between March and September.”

She also recalled the road on the other side of the woods, now called Wendover Lane, known then as Carcass Lane because there was a meat-packaging operation there.

“What comes to mind is a road on which there were no houses, and perhaps part of that was due to the land on the east side having been taken up for athletic fields when Mary Hawley had the Hawley School built [1921].”

Ms Brigham notes that her mother, Alice Houlihan Carroll, and her aunts were amused later on  when several “new” houses were built along Carcass Lane, and the residents got riled up about their street name.

“I don’t think we had ever heard of the word ‘gentrification’ to explain what was going on...it used to be called Carcass Lane because the butchering had been down there. It would have been a natural location, I should think, near the center of town but away from any ‘nice’ houses.”

The neighborhood decided on the name change only after a hotly contested 8-7 vote.

“In 1940, when we were in temporary quarters on The Boulevard, the back of the lot consisted of the remnants of an old orchard, absolutely overgrown into a wilderness of blackberries. We picked and we picked. My mother made blackberry pie every day all summer, and there was a huge stock of canned blackberries to be put on shelves in the new house on Meadow Road. I am much fonder of blackberries than most people I know, and it is all due to that summer.”

When George Beers Farmed The Boulevard

Caryl Stratton, mother of Susanne (Killing) Shortt, lives now in Woodbury. She grew up in Newtown, graduating with the Class of 1957, and she lived for a while with her grandfather, George Beach Beers, in the large Victorian house he owned at the corner of The Boulevard and Church Hill Road.

“My grandfather was a gentleman farmer, who worked between 27 to 30 acres. It was mostly corn fields. The property at 7 The Boulevard was his corn lot.

“My grandfather’s land went all the way over to Hawley School. He had it all mowed. We used to walk across to Hawley when the back hadn’t been built yet [the addition was completed in 1948]. The fields were wet and we were up to our ankles in mud. Then they drained them and the water ended up on the piece of land that Susie’s father and I eventually owned. He always paid taxes as though it were a building lot…but it was wet,” Ms Stratton said.

“What they now call the playground, we used to call the fairgrounds. They had fairs there for many years and people say that from aerial photographs, you can still see the circular pattern of the racetrack. That woods is third or fourth growth,” she added.

When Ms Stratton was married to builder Jerry Killing, they owned a farm on Walnut Tree Hill. Mr Killing died in 1997.

“He built mostly colonial homes, only two or three a year. His estate was finally settled and ownership of that land has passed on to Sue and her sister, Sarah,” Ms Stratton said.

“Jim and Susie got married in November, and they’re just starting their life together. They would love to be able to farm that land.”