Watchtower Farm—Unique in Many Ways
THERE are many farms—some three million in the United States. And in Africa and Asia about two thirds of the people are farmers. Yet it can truthfully be said, that, of all these millions, Watchtower Farm is outstandingly unique.
Location does not make it so. Situated about a hundred miles north of New York city, Watchtower Farm lies in a fertile farming area. And its size—1,700 acres—although larger than the average American farm of about 320 acres, is small compared to many.
Also, Watchtower Farm’s fine dairy herd of some 200 Holstein milk cows and heifers is not in itself unusual. Nor is its excellent beef herd of 900 Hereford, Holstein, Angus and Charolais. Neither are its 500 hogs, 3,400 laying hens and 5,000 fryers in themselves unusual. Many modern dairy, beef, hog and chicken farms are much larger in size.
Unique in Diversity
Yet in these days of specialization, is not this diversification unique? True, small farms often have quite a variety of animals. But do you know of another farm that raises such large numbers of different livestock? Watchtower Farm even has fifty hives of bees that provide honey and pollinate crops.
The diversification extends to the crops as well. Seven hundred acres are in field crops, particularly wheat, oats and corn. Another hundred acres grow thirty-five different kinds of vegetables. Still another 200 acres are in woods, and the rest of the land is used principally for pasture, feed pens, barns and other buildings.
Unique In Self-Sufficiency
Watchtower Farm is also unique in its ability to care for its own needs. Few large farms process their own milk, make their own milk products, slaughter their own animals or formulate their own livestock feed. Yet this one does!
Watchtower Farm homogenizes and pasturizes its milk, has a sizable butter and cheese plant, a modern slaughterhouse, a feed mill that grinds and mixes the livestock feed, and a series of grain bins with a storage capacity of 60,000 bushels of various feeds. Also, it has a modern cannery that quick-freezes a hundred thousand quarts of vegetables each year, besides canning tens of thousands of quarts of various fruits and jellies. And, too, there is a large greenhouse in which are grown not only plants for the gardens, but also lettuce and tomatoes in the wintertime and flowers to beautify the farm.
Still more? Yes, it has a modern repair shop, equipped to keep all the farm machinery in good shape. It also has a sawmill that produces lumber for construction of fences, sheds and other such farm structures. To assure a pure water supply the farm has its own water purification plant; and to prevent pollution of the environment, there is a recently completed modern sewage disposal plant.
Watchtower Farm even has its own shale pit and crusher that produce thousands of tons of crushed shale annually, used in building roads, making parking lots and as a base for other concrete construction. Available, too, are large diesels, that will generate the farm’s own electricity should the commercial power source fail. Important too, the farm has its own fire engine.
Is it any wonder that Watchtower Farm has been compared to a modern city, rather than simply a farm? But why is this farm so different? What is its purpose?
Established for a Unique Purpose
The purpose of most large farms is to make money for their owners. But Watchtower Farm was started back in 1963 for an entirely different purpose. Commenting on this, the New York Times earlier this year said: “It is a veritable land of plenty—in everything but profit, for not an ounce is ever sold.”
‘But, how can that be?’ you may ask. How is it possible for a farm ‘not to sell an ounce’ when it produces each year 80,000 gallons of milk, 50,000 pounds of cheese, 60,000 dozen eggs, and over 300,000 pounds of beef, pork and chicken? Who uses all this food?
The large Christian family associated with the world headquarters of Jehovah’s witnesses does. Some 375 members of this family work at Watchtower Farm, and about 1,350 more of them live in Brooklyn, New York. At factories in Brooklyn, Bible literature is produced, including, each day, 100,000 Bibles and books, and more than three quarters of a million Watchtower and Awake! magazines. The purpose of this literature is to direct attention to God’s kingdom, the good news that Jesus Christ foretold would be preached in all the inhabited earth before the end of this system.—Matt. 24:14.
So, then, the unique purpose of Watchtower Farm is to assist in the fulfillment of this Bible prophecy by providing food at reduced cost for the huge headquarters family working to produce this literature. It is basically as the New York Times reported: “The function of the farm: economy in the name of higher spiritual purposes.” And the economy is considerable.
George Couch, who shares in headquarters management, estimates that it costs only 30 cents per meal to feed the headquarters family. “We serve about 2 million meals a year,” Couch explained. “And when we divide the $350,000 a year that it takes to operate the farm along with kitchen expenses by the number of meals served, we arrive at the 30-cent figure.”
Is it unbelievable to you that excellent meals can be provided these days at such a low cost? Another unique feature about the farm makes it possible.
Volunteer Work Force
This feature is that none of the 1,725 members of the headquarters family, including the ninety-six farm workers, receive a commercial salary. One and all receive board and room and $14 a month for incidental expenses. But since all are Christian ministers who are sincerely interested in seeing the good news of God’s kingdom preached in all the inhabited earth, each is happy for the assignment of work he has.
This is reflected in the fine work the farmers do, as noted by a neighboring elderly farm couple who said: “All our lives we’ve lived in this area and we want to say that it’s just wonderful what you folks are doing with the land. My wife and I always slow down when we drive past your farm and we just can’t help wondering at all the young men you have working on it. It’s so unusual, for it seems that today you just can’t keep young folks on the farm.”
But there are many others besides farmers working at Watchtower Farm. Since February 1973 a printing factory has been in operation there, and by May twenty-three workers already were printing and mailing out one and a half million copies of each issue of The Watchtower! And, besides, another printing plant is in the course of construction. When completed this one will have eight acres of floor space; already one section of it has been finished.
So, for many months, the majority of the volunteer work force at Watchtower Farm has been involved in construction of these factories and the recently completed six-floor residence building. Some 250 persons are presently sharing in the construction. These have come from every state in the continental United States. They include a registered architect and civil, electrical and other sorts of engineers.
Construction superintendent Walter Ludke, a forty-five-year-old family man, observed: “Among the older workers are a dozen couples who are grandparents, and even a couple who are great-grandparents. At one time one of the grandfathers was working alongside his grandson. We have many talented youths here who are eager to learn and willing to work hard.”
A tremendous quantity of concrete is required for this construction. Since outside suppliers could not guarantee a sufficient quantity when needed, a concrete mixing plant was purchased and was erected by the, volunteer workers. Max Larson, who shares in construction oversight, noted: “This plant has resulted in a 50-percent saving in every yard of concrete we use. And so the $50,000 plant paid for itself with the first 5,000 yards we made. And by the time the job is finished we will have used about 25,000 yards.”
Because of the prominent part that Watchtower Farm now plays in the furtherance of the Kingdom-preaching world wide, Christians from all parts of the world regularly visit it, including planeloads from the western and midwestern United States and busloads from New England and mid-Atlantic states. Visiting also are newspapermen, farmers and members of neighboring youth day camps and 4-H clubs. All told, some 15,000 persons visited the farm last year.
Modern Efficient Methods
Visitors usually are impressed by the size and efficiency of the farm operation. For example, there are two flocks of some 1,700 laying hens each that are kept in a long, two-section poultry shed. Here all the feeding and watering are done by automation. The shed has a floor of slats with pits underneath for the droppings. Thus it needs to be cleaned only once a year, a front-end loader being employed for this.
After the hens of one flock have laid eggs for a year, the period of their greatest productivity, they are butchered and replaced by another flock ready to lay. One flock is replaced in the spring and the other in the fall, thus keeping production quite uniform. Laying nests are slanted so that the eggs roll forward into a covered tray, which makes for easy gathering. One of those who cares for the chickens is Fred Eckley, a ninety-three-year-old minister.
Very efficient, too, is the operation of the dairy. The one hundred Holsteins pass through a modern milking parlor where they are milked in about an hour and forty-five minutes, twice a day. The milk is piped from the milking machines through glass tubing directly to a 2,000-gallon cooling tank. From there it is fed into a clarification machine, after which it is heated to 139° F. before homogenizing, and at least momentarily to 162.8° F. for pasturizing. It is then stored at 40° F. until shipped to Brooklyn in ten-gallon stainless-steel cans.
Efficient methods are also employed in this the largest beef operation in southern New York State. Each year hundreds of animals are fattened and butchered. The Hereford, Angus and Charolais breeds are confined to feed lots and provided with corn silage, grain supplement and a small amount of hay. “In sixteen to twenty months the heifers finish off at around 950 pounds and the steers at between 1,000 and 1,100 pounds,” Lon Schilling, thirty-three-year-old manager of the beef herd, noted. “Crossbreeding is highly favored,” he added, “resulting in larger, faster-growing steers and heifers.”
But of particular interest is the relatively new feed program that has been successfully instituted. “Because of our dairy operation,” Schilling explained, “we have available many Holstein steers that we now raise for beef. At four to five weeks they are weaned from milk, and each calf is gradually changed over to all the dry whole shelled corn it can eat and a daily pound and a half of protein mineral supplement—and that is all! The Holstein breed has been discovered to be unique in that it can rapidly convert this high-energy feed to meat, reaching slaughtering weight of about 1,000 pounds in only eleven months.”
Modern efficient methods are also in evidence in the temperature-controlled hog house. “Our operation is set up so that we butcher thirty hogs every other week, or sixty a month,” Gordon Trout, caretaker of the hogs, observed. “We keep our hogs separated into four basic weight groups,” he continued. “The first group includes piglets up to four weeks; the second, pigs from four weeks until they reach 50 pounds; the third, pigs from 50 to 100 pounds; and the fourth group, pigs from 100 to 200 pounds. They reach 200 pounds in five to six months, at which time they are ready to be butchered.”
The Water Purification Plant
On an average day Watchtower Farm consumes 35,000 gallons of water. To supply this need a reservoir was excavated holding about 18 million gallons, sufficient for over a year’s supply. The reservoir fills with rainwater from an adjoining woods. To make this water fit to drink, a plant was constructed capable of purifying 100,000 gallons a day.
This purification plant consists of a series of tanks in which chemicals are added, such as alum, to coagulate the impurities, and chlorine, which acts as a germicide. By the time the water reaches the last tank or “clear well” it is fit to drink. The water is then pumped up to the 139-foot-high, 40,000-gallon water tower, from where it is gravity-fed to the barns, residences and other buildings of the complex.
Sewage Disposal Plant
Important also is getting rid of sewage wastes. On Watchtower Farm this presents quite a problem because of its quantity and variety. Besides the wastes from 350 people, there are blood from the slaughterhouse, and wastes from the cheese house, laundry, dairy, kitchen and cannery. At the disposal plant the sewage is first screened before going to a tank where preliminary mixing occurs.
From there the sewage is pumped to an aeration tank containing waste-eating bacteria of the aerobic type. This kind of bacteria depends upon oxygen to live, the process being practically odorless. Oxygen is fed into the tank and the bacteria rapidly multiply.
After that the “effluent,” as it is called, goes to a settling tank where the solids settle to the bottom as sludge. The clear water above the sludge goes to a tank where chlorine is added to kill the bacteria, after which it enters the Shawangunk River, chemically fit to drink. The sludge is pumped into a sludge digester, and from there it goes into the sludge chamber. It remains in this chamber until pumped into a liquid manure spreader, which first makes a furrow for the sludge and then covers it over.
Truly a Unique Enterprise
It is no wonder that visitors are amazed by what they see at Watchtower Farm. Clearly it is no ordinary farm. Its diversification of livestock and crops, its self-sufficiency in caring for its needs, its dedicated volunteer work force, and its purpose of expediting the preaching of the good news of God’s kingdom in all the inhabited earth in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy—all these things truly make Watchtower Farm unique.
Why not plan a visit to the farm on some weekday and see it for yourself? Perhaps you, too, will then voice the sentiments of one of the workers, who said: “I marvel at what is taking place here. It truly is a manifestation of God’s holy spirit.”
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New residence building at Watchtower Farm
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Storage bins and feed mill; dairy barn at the right
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Examining some of the large beef herd