Further Expansion at Watchtower Farms

EARTH WIDE the preaching work of Jehovah’s Witnesses is expanding remarkably. In 1986 there were 3,229,022 of these Kingdom publishers, about three times the number 20 years before! And last March 24 over 8,100,000 Witnesses and their friends attended the Memorial of Christ’s death!

To keep pace with such growth, the facilities at the international headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn and Wallkill, New York, need regularly to be expanded. October 18, 1986, saw the dedication of a recent major addition, the triple-wing, 176-room residence building at Watchtower Farms seen below. It will accommodate 346 of the more than 900 headquarters personnel living there.

The afternoon dedication program highlighted the history of Watchtower Farms, located about 95 miles northwest of the principal printing facilities of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York.a

The first farm near Wallkill was obtained in January 1963, and the second, four miles away, was purchased in 1967. However, besides these two farms of about 3,000 acres (including leased land), there is a 550-acre farm near South Lansing, New York, a 150-acre farm near Port Murray, New Jersey, and a 670-acre farm at Patterson, New York.b

‘But why does a publishing society have farms?’ you may ask. They are for the production of quality food at low cost for the more than 3,500 headquarters workers, over 2,500 of whom eat in ten dining rooms linked by closed circuit television in Brooklyn. Feeding the entire staff of headquarters workers is comparable to feeding a small town! For example, at a typical meal about 275 gallons of milk, 400 quarts of vegetables, 20 bushels of potatoes, and 1,100 pounds of roast beef are consumed!c

Hence the extensive facilities at Watchtower Farms. Over 40 types of fruits and vegetables are grown there, and most are processed at the on-site cannery. The dairy herd produces, on the average, about 775 gallons of milk a day; the hens lay over 4,500 eggs daily; and each year some 535,000 pounds of meat are obtained from the processing of about 500 beef cattle, more than 1,300 pigs, and about 25,000 chickens.

More Than Food Production

When construction of the first residence building of about 40 rooms was completed in 1968, it was intended that Watchtower Farms remain only a farm. But space for printing became limited in Brooklyn, so that in 1970 construction began at Watchtower Farms on a one-story 200- by 300-foot printery, as well as another residence building to accommodate about 60 persons.d

However, even before these buildings were completed in March of 1971, construction had begun on an adjoining three-story 350- by 350-foot factory addition and a six-floor residence for about 450 persons. On April 3, 1973, the completed new home was dedicated.

Printing began at Watchtower Farms with the March 1, 1973, issue of The Watchtower. By 1980 there were in use 15 large rotary letterpresses, weighing between 40 and 50 tons each, that turned out over 17 million magazines a month. By this time, faster offset presses had been installed at the Brooklyn printery, so a complex program of replacing letterpress printing with offset printing was also begun at Watchtower Farms.

Each of the three huge new offset presses now operating at the farm factory is 101 feet long, 25 feet wide, 15 feet high, and weighs 197 tons! Each can produce 60,000 magazines an hour, or a combined production of well over a million magazines a day!

To accommodate such giants, a 27-foot-high ceiling section that is 350 feet long and 125 feet wide was added to the pressroom. This brought the total factory area to 812,625 square feet of floor space, almost equal to 19 acres, or 14 United States football fields of 360 by 160 feet![5, p. 2]

Earlier the Kingdom Hall had been increased in size to accommodate 916 permanent seats. And in 1986 the dining room was doubled in area, so that over 1,200 can now be comfortably seated.

In 1979 a team of Jehovah’s Witnesses at Watchtower Farms began developing a computerized system, called MEPS, for producing literature in many languages. By May 1986, when the project was completed, a total of 79 MEPS computers, 45 MEPS typesetters, and 181 MEPS terminals, or work stations, had been manufactured and shipped to 27 different branches. In the past few years, 131 Witnesses from 31 countries have been trained at Watchtower Farms in the use and maintenance of MEPS.

Dedication Day

The Watchtower Farms family was delighted to have over 800 invited guests share the dedication program with them. Most of these were from the Brooklyn headquarters, but others came from Canada, England, Ireland, Taiwan​—altogether from 15 countries! Many arrived during predawn darkness to attend the morning worship program. When it began at 7:00 a.m., over a thousand had assembled in the spacious, enlarged dining room to hear the comments of Karl F. Klein, a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Guests by the hundreds continued to arrive, and during the morning hours, they were treated to a special tour of the expanded farm and factory facilities. In the Kingdom Hall, the 45-minute slide program “Watchtower Farms​—Sharing Joyfully in the Harvest” was shown at intervals throughout the morning, which provided a welcome rest from the walking tours. The program gave a progressive history of the expansion at Watchtower Farms over the past 23 years.

After a break for a delightful cafeteria-style lunch, 958 packed out the Kingdom Hall for the dedication program that began at 2:00 p.m. Overflow seating in the factory accommodated another 758, who watched the program on two huge screens. Another 217 in Brooklyn listened to the proceedings over the Watchtower Society’s telephone tie line, making a total attendance of 1,933.

The first two parts of the program reviewed the fascinating history of the progressive developments at the Farms, especially of the construction work. Short talks by five members of the Governing Body followed, and then Milton Henschel, one of the Watch Tower Society’s vice presidents, gave the stirring dedication talk.

How grand it is to see the expansion of the facilities at Watchtower Farms, since it is just further evidence of the blessing of Jehovah God on the worldwide work of Kingdom preaching!

[Footnotes]

[Pictures on page 25]

[Pictures on page 26]

Rotary offset press, with an inset of its control room