Eleanor Houston Smith and Lawrence M.C. Smith: Pioneers in Organic Agriculture at Wolfe's Neck Farm

Eleanor Houston Smith and Lawrence M.C. Smith

Pioneers in Organic Agriculture at Wolfe’s Neck Farm

by Kathryn Schneider Smith

WOLFE’S NECK CENTER IS ANCHORED AND INSPIRED by its founders, Lawrence M.C. Smith and his wife Eleanor Houston Smith. Pioneers in organic agriculture, land conservation, and the environmental movement, visionaries ready to experiment, they were partners in creating the mold within which today’s Center for Agriculture and the Environment carries on its work for Maine and the nation.

LMC, known publicly by his initials and to friends as Sam, was born in 1902 into an old Philadelphia and Delaware County family. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford. His law degree was the foundation for a wide range of occupations—public servant, entrepreneur, international businessman, environmentalist, conservationist, farmer.

Eleanor Houston, born in 1910, was also of an old Philadelphia family, going back to the days of William Penn. Her grandfather, Henry Howard Houston, was a Pennsylvania Railroad executive and developer of the Chestnut Hill neighborhood; her father, Samuel Frederick Houston, was President of Real Estate Trust and a leading citizen. Immersed in nature on the grounds of her Chestnut Hill home, she would become known as a leading conservationist in Philadelphia and Maine.

The two married in 1933 and would, as a team, put their vision, energy, and resources to work on the many interests they shared, including the creation of Wolfe’s Neck Farm. They spent their first years together in Washington, D.C., where LMC worked in the New Deal administration of President Franklin Roosevelt, first as legal coordinator in the National Recovery Administration and then as associate council of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When war broke out, he became chief of the Special War Policies Division of the Department of Justice, and later chief of economic missions to French West Africa, Switzerland, and Sweden.

After the war, the couple made plans to move back to Philadelphia, and to look for a summer retreat in Maine for their family of five children, ages 13 to 3. EHS had spent summers on her family’s Clapboard Island in Falmouth. As a joke, a family member sent a real estate brochure advertising a grand, stone, pillared house in the midst of the woods on Wolfe’s Neck in Freeport, perfect for an institution, it said. But in 1946, they took the first through train to Maine and bought it. It came with about 300 acres of woods and fields, a farmhouse, two barns, an old apple orchard, and extensive shoreline on Casco Bay and the Harraseeket River. People were leaving Maine after the war, farms were going back to forest, and land was going begging. The price for all of it was $100 an acre.

The Smiths would spend summers in Maine but continue to live and be fully engaged in Philadelphia. LMC co-founded

the WFLN radio station, one of the nation’s first FM stations and the city’s first and only classical music station. He was a long-time board member of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a founder of the local chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, the Human Relations Commission, and the city’s Housing Commission. He served for 10 years as the chair of the Philadelphia Board of Trade and Conventions. He would continue his international involvement with the creation of Panocean, a business that brought Central American lumber to the United States. He also did that in a nonprofit philanthropic mode as an active member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. He was vice president of the U.S. Commission for UNESCO from 1965 to 1975.

EHS would work with her sister Margaret Houston Meigs (Mrs. Robert) and LMC to create the Schuylkill Valley Nature Center, donating 500 acres of family land within Philadelphia to this organization, the first of that size inside a major metropolitan center. It continues as the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. She is also responsible for the Wissahickon Environmental Center and major gifts of land to Fairmount Park. She would serve two terms on the Historical Commission of Pennsylvania and be named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania. She would be a co-founder of the Maine Chapter of the Nature Conservancy with Rachael Carson in 1956 and become an active member of its national Board of Governors from 1967 to 1974.

The Smiths relax on the front lawn of their Wolfe’s Neck summer home in 1967.

The Pioneering Farm

THE SMITHS BROUGHT this same energy to Maine. They tried some early enterprises, including growing one acre and a half of cucumbers for pickles, requiring constant picking by family and guests, and lasting only one year. They employed local people to make small wood products. But they were also thinking how their new land could be useful to the community and the state. EHS had grown up in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia, surrounded by open land and a small farm that supplied fresh produce for the family. She spent her childhood roaming this landscape and was proud that she had become a member of the Audubon Society when she was seven years old.

Mrs. Smith was familiar with the writings of Louis Bromfield, considered by many to be the father of organic agriculture in America, still a very new idea in the late 1940s. Key to the approach was the natural enrichment of the soil. By 1949, EHS had made the Smith land an early Cumberland County Soil Conservation District. That year the Smiths’ Maine letterheads began carrying the name Wolf Neck Farm.

Meanwhile LMC, with his international wartime experience, had set up a lumber business with connections in Central America. He would take the lead in making their Maine woods into a properly managed tree farm in the mid1950s. He purchased the first woodchipper in the state of Maine to facilitate the business. The Soil Conservation and Tree Farm signs began to mark the place as ahead of its time.

Actual farming began in 1953, when the couple made their first purchase of Black Angus cattle—seven bred heifers, a steer, and a bull—all with pedigrees from breeder Foster Grant in Dover-Foxcroft, highly regarded in the business for 30 years. They intended at first to focus on breeding animals for sale. A July 10, 1954, article and photo spread in the Portland Evening Express, “Freeport Farm Brought Back to Life,” announced the presence of this new farm in Freeport, giving all credit for its creation to EHS. “Mrs. Smith was saddened,” it reported, “by the run-out, nonproductive, abandoned land, and the two empty barns.” The article reports her long-range planning began with her membership in the Cumberland County Soil Conservation District in 1949. “She saw it as a challenge. Her enthusiasm was caught by her husband. Looking back, LMC said: ‘It was as if the land was telling us what to do.’”

Mr. Smith is identified under his photograph holding an Angus calf, as “Administrative Assistant.” The Smith children remember working on the farm throughout the summer.

The Smiths had purchased four adjacent and nearby small farms to acquire the hayfields they would need, doubling their acreage to about 600 by 1954. In all cases the farmers were elderly and retiring, the next generation not interested in farming, in most cases given life-tenancy while their fields remained productive. They asked James T. Mann, of a local family whose Ulster-Scot roots in the area went back more than 200 years, to be farm manager. He had been with them since 1948 managing the farm’s early lumber business. He was an invaluable colleague, employee, and friend during the early years of the farm.

From the beginning no chemicals were used as fertilizer or weedkillers, and no antibiotics were used on the animals.

The Smiths were swimming against the tide. Wartime chemicals were surplus and new uses were being found for them in agricultural products; state agriculture agents were promoting them. It would be 1962 before Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring brought the dangers of DDT and other chemicals to animals, to humans, and to the ecosystem to broad public attention for the first time.

As noted above, EHS was inspired by the American organic farming pioneer, Louis Bromfield, his 1943 book Pleasant Valley stuffed with related clippings in her library. His book described the land conservation practices he was using to bring back a

Eleanor Houston Smith, the founder of Wolfe’s Neck Farm, was a leading conservationist who pioneered and modeled soil conservation methods in Cumberland County. She joined the Conservation District in 1949 when this picture was taken.

worn-out farm in Mansfield, Ohio, named Malabar Farm. As an expatriate novelist in France in the 1930s, Bromfield had visited the botanist Sir Albert Howard, a British agricultural agent in India, whose work and publications would come to be considered the inspiration for the world-wide organic farming movement. Howard saw a connection between the healthy farms and animals he worked with in India and the ancient organic methods the people used. At the heart of the system was healthy soil, naturally enriched by hummus, manure, and plowed under cover crops called green manure. Bromfield also practiced contour plowing, the management of water flow, and strip planting to prevent erosion, with the devastation of the Dust Bowl still ravaging the American heartland clearly in mind.

Mrs. Smith’s early involvement in soil conservation directly reflected the experience of Bromfield in bringing back the abandoned fields of Malabar Farm. The 1954 news article pointed out

that at Wolf Neck Farm, “sod waterways and drainage ditches have been built with technical assistance of the county soil conservation district to control water and conserve soil. A farm pond has been built and another is in the offing.” Bushes planted along both sides of Wolf Neck Road near the big barn to manage wind and attract and sequester birds remain a feature of the farm landscape today. In 1955 Cumberland County Soil Conservation District officials named Wolf Neck Farm the outstanding conservation farm of the year. In 1960 four Maine county soil conservation districts would come to the farm for a Demonstration Day. The farm from the start was a place where new methods were showcased. The Smiths would be in personal touch with fellow organic pioneers, J.I. Rodale of the Rodale Institute in Emmaus, Pennsylvania and Helen and Scott Nearing of the Good Life Center on the Blue Hill Peninsula in Maine.

The Smiths were thinking ahead of the times in many other ways. Their beef was grass-fed and low fat, not a recognized value until recently. A marketing system begun in 1956 sold meat in large frozen packages direct to the customer by air and farm pickup. Later truck deliveries were made to customers throughout New England. An experimental vacuum system of making silage for winter, and bunker feeding with fresh chop brought to the cattle in bunkers in summer saved costs—no expensive silos or elaborate fencing were necessary.

Pioneers in organic agriculture, the Smiths were among the first to market grass-fed, lean beef raised without chemical fertilizers. This worn sign carries the date of incorporation, though the farm started in 1954, well before Rachael Caron’s book Silent Spring first alerted the general public to the dangers of DDT and other chemicals to the environment.

This photograph of LMC Smith with an Angus calf in the 1954 Portland Evening Express article announcing the creation of the farm identified him as “Administrative Assistant.” He soon got fully engaged in his wife’s enterprise. They worked as a team.

Maine’s Future in Mind

SOON LMC BECAME DEEPLY INVOLVED AND much more than an administrative assistant. As the Smiths’ pioneering work became known, he would be quoted in the daily press and agricultural publications making the case that after the war, two-thirds of Maine farmland was going back to forest, and that beef farming was a way to bring that land back and build the state economy. Farmland at the time was inexpensive, he pointed out—about $50 an acre in Maine rather than $500 in Pennsylvania or Colorado. Charming old farmhouses and barns were available at little cost. Interstate highways and airfreight made it affordable to ship the product to the cities of New England and beyond. The soil was good for grass and grass-fed, lean beef was the product of the future. In the largest context, he saw farming as a strategy to save Maine’s precious open spaces and environmental treasures.

LMC threw himself into detailed research and experimentation. He made some of the first inquiries about the exact chemicals in stone dust that had the most nutrient value. He mixed it with other natural fertilizers—phosphate rock, limestone, and heavy applications of hen and cow manure. He built his trench

silos, common in the area, out of railroad ties with fiberglass linings instead of the usual concrete. They were less expensive, and he could build them inside his barns out of the rain.

The farm was known for mechanizing wherever possible to save labor costs, and in the most affordable way. The tires on the wagons that brought the heavy chop to the cows were blowing out with the weight. LMC bought used airplane tires from military bases to replace them; they would serve for decades. He brought in Henry Gross, the nationally known expert on dowsing (finding water with a forked rod or stick), to successfully find the wells the farm needed. Always an innovator, he paid to pasture cattle on a series of satellite farms that were lying idle, enabling older farmers to keep their land productive.

Mr. Smith was also ahead of his time as a leading public advocate for the potential of aquaculture to feed cattle as well as people on saltwater farms. He supported an early trial to show that farmed oysters could survive Maine winters. His mentors and colleagues in this effort were Robert L. Dow, the Marine Research Director in the Maine Department of Sea and Shore Fisheries, and John Cole, the editor of the Maine Times as well as the chairman of the Brunswick Shellfish Commission.

The Smiths spent summers in Maine. All the children would be involved in work on the farm. Left to right with their parents in 1948 are Lewis, Eleanor, Sallie, baby Minie, Sam, and Meredith seated with the family French poodle, Joanie.

Horace Mann on the tractor and LMC check out the Angus cattle at the bunker feeder in 1968. LMC created a system of satellite farms, one of which Mr. Mann owned just down the road. He was the father of the first farm manager, James T. Mann.

Enjoying and Saving the Environment

IN 1962 THE SMITHS ADDED public campsites on their land adjacent to the farm fields and the ocean. The campground was called Recompence, named for the river that ran through the farm on an eighteenth-century map, today called Little River. It would add revenues for the farm, but there were deeper purposes. Not only organic farmers, the Smiths were also committed to conserving open space, which both the farm and campsites were helping them do; to preserving the environment; to public access to the ocean, fast declining; and to the preservation of historic buildings and landscapes. The campground brochure encouraged campers to enjoy the water and the woods, and to be aware of the history all around them, from the time of Native people to the early shipbuilders, farmers, and millers. “Much remains undamaged by change,” it said. The camp continues today as Wolfe’s Neck Oceanfront Camping.

It was also in the early 1960s that the Smiths made major legal news. The Central Maine Power Company, without permission, sprayed chemicals to control growth under their powerlines in the woods and along Wolf Neck Road through the farm. It was anathema for a farm dedicated to keeping its land and its product free from chemical fertilizers and pesticides. LMC took the power company and the Reynolds Tree Expert Company to court. CMP offered to settle out of court, but LMC refused; he wanted a judicially ordered injunction for the public record. After just one day of hearings, Cumberland

County Superior Court Judge Francis W. Sullivan awarded an injunction. CMP was not to spray again on the farm or on any land owned by the Smiths. The Smiths were awarded $1,000 in damages. CMP went on record saying its policy was not to spray when any landowners objected. As part of the settlement, the Smiths would take over the clearing of brush and trees in the right of way. The president of the Nature Conservancy, Richard Goodwin, wrote LMC his congratulations, saying “this is a real milestone in the rights of the individual with regard to pesticide trespass.” The Philadelphia Inquirer called it one of the first environmental lawsuits against a utility company in the country. It remains today a landmark case.

In a 1964 landmark case, the Smiths win a suit against the Central Maine Power Company for spraying chemicals without permission under the powerlines on the farm. All landowners in Maine could henceforth forbid the same.

New Management

IN THE MID-1960S the Smiths realized that the farm would move ahead best with professional management.

LMC conducted an international search for about two years for the best person, and found Charles DeGrandpre not far away, managing Alfalfa Farm, its iconic pair of blue silos a landmark on Route 95 in Topsfield, Massachusetts. DeGrandpre had his own direct experience with pioneers in organic agriculture. His first job after Essex County Agricultural School and wartime service in the Navy had been managing the Saracen farm of Barclay Warburton in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A Harvard graduate of a socially prominent family, Warburton had connections to the most famous of organic farming pioneers in England—Friend Sykes and Lady Eve Balfour. Inspired by Sir Albert Howard in India, as Louis Bromfield had been in America, the two along with Howard were widely considered the leaders of the early worldwide organic movement in the 1940s. DeGrandpre met both Sykes and Balfour when they came to visit Saracen Farm. Warburton and DeGrandpre used their organic methods and bought seed from England.

DeGrandpre, his wife Claire, and four boys ages 16, 15, 13, and 12 came to Wolfe’s Neck Farm in October, 1968. DeGrandpre’s self-deprecating and low-key manner, coming with great competence and an extraordinary commitment to whatever hard work was required, was the perfect fit for Maine, for the farm, and for the Smith family. He was known as simply, Charlie. He and his wife, Claire, and his boys—Richard, David, Jim, and Chuck— were a farm family, and all got involved in the work, at all times of day and night, their farmhouse at Little River both farm office and home.

The Smiths and the DeGrandpres began to build on the organic practices in place and make way for the new. The quality of the grass-fed beef was improved by further enriching the soil with high quality seed mixtures, cover crops, and heavy doses of hen manure. The fields became rich in clover, the best for drawing nitrogen from the air. Charlie himself created the organic, nutritional mix of the small amounts of grain used for heifers and for the

adult animals going to market. It included kelp from the sea, and dried blood he went to Massachusetts himself to get.

LMC and Charlie developed a breeding program to produce better animals. They experimented with cross breeding Charolais and Hereford breeds with the Black Angus. DeGrandpre also

improved the marketing of the frozen beef. The farm began to sell more locally and at the same time develop markets accessible by truck. Charlie and Claire would drive themselves twice monthly with the frozen product to organic food cooperatives and the growing number of individuals looking for organic meat around New England. Claire organized the orders and the tours.

Charlie DeGrandpre counts the hay bales in the field.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM JONES

The local veterinarian Dr. Russell Pinfold would consult on the phone and help from time to time, but with healthy animals and Charlie’s expertise, vet bills seldom went beyond $50 to $100 a year. Charlie and his boys could also fix the machinery, the almost fantastical mix of trucks and tractors, some European, some literally homemade of various parts, the legacy of Mr. Smith’s love of old cars, of economizing, and making do. Charlie added some modern, American-made vehicles; easier to get parts.

But the biggest step forward was the purchase of the first machine in the state of Maine to harvest hay in huge, round rolls. In addition to feeding the cattle at bunkers twice a day with green chop, a cadre of farm workers in the summer were putting up small, square bales of hay for winter feed, an improvement on the trench silos. But haying and stacking with square bales was labor intensive and seemed antiquated to Mr. Smith. He found the solution at a trade show a round baler only one year on the market. He bought it and put it to work. It was featured in a major spread in the August 10, 1973, issue of the Maine Times.

Charlie’s son Jim said the change was dramatic; one man could put up more than three times the hay in round bales rather than square. Once again ingenuity was required. The machine was so ahead of its time that there was no accompanying device to get

these big bales into the barn. DeGrandpre went to his machine shop and designed a two-pronged device for the front of the tractor and a spear on the back so that he and his helpers could move two bales at a time into the barns. Many hours of labor were saved. LMC was once again looking at a larger impact. “I hope this new concept in farming will interest others,” he said. This first baler needed improvements; the hay was wound too loosely and not tied. But a better machine was only a few years away and it changed the way this farm and others operated in a profound way.

In the late 1970s, Charlie created a rotational grazing system. Once the grass had been eaten down to 4 inches, the cattle were moved to another field, allowing the first to grow back to 8 inches. They were always getting the most nutritious buds of the grass; It is a system widely used today but new at the time. DeGrandpre put fencing on wheels so fields could be refigured easily. He also created ways to move the water the cattle needed on wheels from field to field. (One animal requires about 30 gallons a day.) The system was innovative and attracted attention and visitors eager to learn. Among them, Jim DeGrandpre remembers, were Peggy and David Rockefeller who were developing their own organic farm on Mt. Desert Island; they came and stayed for three days to learn the various methods Charlie was using.

Among many other innovations, the Smiths bought the first round baler in the state of Maine in 1973. One man could put up more than three times the hay in round bales rather than square. David DeGrandpre is driving the tractor.

PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM JONES

Land Conservation and Historic Preservation

WHILE THE FARM grew and prospered, the Smiths took time to pursue other passions—the preservation of farmland and open space, environmental protection, and public access to the ocean. The farm and campground were furthering all of these goals. But beyond Wolfe’s Neck, they had saved Popham Beach from development, buying about 200 acres quietly in the early 1960s and holding them for the state until it could appropriate the funds to buy them at the Smiths’ cost for a state park. The state appropriated the money and opened the park in 1968; the appreciation in land value was the Smiths’ gift to the state.

The Smiths would follow that in 1969 with the gift of about 250 acres of woods to the state of Maine for Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park. It opened in 1973 within the bounds of the farm, with 1.6 miles of frontage on Casco Bay and the Harraseeket River, and an endowment for educational programming unique in the state park system. Also in 1969, Mr. Smith created Landguard Trust, Inc., a nonprofit organization to promote the use of conservation easements, a new strategy to preserve valued environments and open space. Mrs. Smith at the time was an active member of the national governing board of the Nature Conservancy, serving there from 1964 to 1977. She had earlier been an incorporator and board member of the Maine chapter of the Conservancy in the 1950s, and that board frequently met at the Smith house. Rachael Carson, future author of the groundbreaking Silent Spring, was a cofounder and fellow board member, and was a speaker at one of those meetings at the Smith house. The entire farm, the campground, and the state park are protected in perpetuity today by conservation easements given by the Smiths to the state and the American Farmland Trust.

The Smiths were early also to the historic preservation movement. In Freeport they gave the land for Mast Landing Sanctuary, 145 acres of land rich in human and natural history, to the Maine Audubon Society, and the historic Pettengill House

and its 140-acre farm to the Freeport Historical Society.

In August 1975, Mr. Smith died suddenly of a heart attack, a great shock to all. John Cole, editor of the Maine Times , wrote, “No person in the last 30 years has been as sensitive to Maine’s needs, as creative about finding solutions to its problems or more generous with his energies and wherewithal than Sam Smith. Not since Governor Percy Baxter—the parent of Baxter State Park and wise land-use policies—has any Maine individual left a legacy like Sam Smith’s.” Cole went on to say Smith was determined to have his gifts go unheralded, thus his passing went without public tribute. “In his soul, Sam Smith held a reverence for the natural integrity of the state he loved. He could hear the poetry of the land and the sea.”

Lawrence M.C. and Eleanor Houston Smith attend the dedication of Popham Beach State Park July 30, 1968. They had facilitated its acquisition by the state.

The Organic Movement Grows

THE CUTTING-EDGE WORK of the farm would be carried forward by Mrs. Smith and Mr. DeGrandpre in new ways. The skill and innovation that DeGrandpre brought to the farm drew increasing attention from the daily press and agricultural journals. A November 1979 article in the Brunswick Times Record touted Charlie’s healthy sales of organic beef. The herd was at about 300 animals, and between 100 and 125 were being slaughtered for the organic market annually. DeGrandpre said the organic movement had become pronounced in the

The new, big, red pole barn was often the setting for meetings of the Maine Beef Producers Association, of which DeGrandpre had been a co-founder. Farmers came from around the state to learn about rotational grazing and fencing and other innovations. Charlie received its first Beef Producer of the Year award. He developed a working relationship with the Cumberland County agricultural agent who came often to see what was happening at Wolfe’s Neck Farm, the support for organic farming now growing. DeGrandpre was an early member of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and was among the first to bring animals to the MOFGA Common Ground Fair in its early days.

early 1970s. Now there were more orders than they could fill. The farm was featured on the cover of the 1984 Annual Report of the American Farmland Trust, noting the farmland was protected by an AFT conservation easement.

It was EHS who made the biggest change. She had the idea to build a large pole barn at the Little River Farmhouse to provide for the first time a central place to birth and care for the calves, to feed the cattle about to go to market, and to bring parts of the herd together for other special needs. She loved that barn and said that she had purchased it instead of a fur coat she happened to see, a high-price-tag dangling. “I could build a barn for that,” she told others she thought. And she did that in the early 1980s.

In 1984 Mrs. Smith at age 74 decided along with her six children— Lewis, Eleanor, Sam, Meredith, Sallie, and Minie—to preserve the farm for the future by donating it in its entirety to the University of Southern Maine. She backed it up with the gift of a conservation easement on the entire farm to the American Farmland Trust that required its use as farmland in perpetuity. The stone house was given for use as a USM conference center. In 1986 she donated the map, atlas, and globe collection she and her husband had enjoyed putting together to the USM library. It now operates as the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education in the USM Glickman Family Library. The globe collection is the finest outside that of the Library of Congress. Mrs. Smith would pass away after a short illness just three years later in August, 1987, while building a new house on some remaining property overlooking the sea. The headline on her obituary in the Maine Sunday Telegram noted her philanthropy and called her a “leader in alternative agriculture, environmental protection, conservation, and historic preservation.” She had championed it all “long before their importance became generally recognized.” She had been a founder and director of the Institute of Alternative Agriculture, in addition to her pioneering work with the Nature Conservancy. Her many memberships and honors included the prestigious Margaret Douglas Medal of The Garden Club of America in 1985. That same year she had been named the Cumberland County Extension Association Outstanding Person. In the spring of 1987 she had received the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science.

Charles DeGrandpre and his wife Claire take a break at a beef sale in the pole barn, built by Mrs. Smith the early 1980s. The Smith Center for Research and Education now stands on the footprint of this barn.

Building on the Legacy

THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE held the farm only ten years. It determined that an urban university was not the best steward for its agricultural and environmental purposes.

In 1997 USM turned it over to the non-profit foundation that carries its mission forward today in new and expanded ways.

In the early 2000s, the farm pioneered a precedent-setting marketing program for organic beef that served farmers from the Mississippi River on the west to Washington, D.C. on the south. In effect it created a large-scale version of LMC’s satellite farm program, setting the high Wolfe’s Neck Farm standards for all the meat sold through the program. It was an example of how a nonprofit, supported by an endowment, could pioneer a risky startup that a commercial farm could not. In 2007 the farm turned over what had become a major beef business operation beyond its nonprofit purposes and capacity to Pineland Farms, where it continues today.

In 2015 the farm saw an opportunity to support new ventures in organic farming. It accepted a $1.7 million dollar grant from Stonyfield Organic, the largest organic yogurt company in the United States, to create the nation’s first residential research and training program for organic dairy farmers. The farm’s new dairy complex is open to the public today.

To better represent the farm’s expanded enterprises and focus on work happening in the intersection of agriculture/food and environment/climate, the Wolfe’s Neck Farm Foundation began in 2017 to operate under the name Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment.

The Center has built upon its work locally and added some

larger, national initiatives in an effort to reduce the impact of agriculture on climate change through the practices of regenerative agriculture. A central goal is keeping more carbon in the soil. Multi-million-dollar public and private grants now support research and networks of partner organizations and farmers across the nation, based at Wolfe’s Neck Center, who are working together to carry out the best new practices. The Center is now pledged to “Transforming our relationship with farming and food for a healthier planet.”

Wolfe’s Neck Center endeavors to work in the visionary, enterprising, and innovative spirit that the Smiths brought to their creation, way ahead of their time in so many ways. While its mission is now national, even international, in scope, its land and facilities are open to the public daily, valuing its role as a community center for Freeport and the region. Its local programming serves local schools, youth, and adults. Thousands of children and their families have memories of the farm’s summer day camp over the decades. And just over 14,000 annual visitors to the campground continue to enjoy nature and access to the ocean. Locals and visitors gather at the Farm Café to share farm produce. Hikers and dog walkers enjoy its trails and the unpaved, country lane that is Burnett Road, an old country path that surely follows the trail for native Abenaki people between Wolfe’s Neck and Flying Point.

The Smith Center for Research and Education stands on the footprint of Mrs. Smith’s much- loved 1980s barn, no longer needed for the beef herd of her day, but now the heart of the center’s innovative work toward the best future for farming and the planet. There are reasons to believe that Lawrence M.C. and Eleanor Houston Smith might be pleased.

The Smith Center for Research and Education, dedicated May 11, 2023, honors and continues the Smiths’ innovative work begun for Maine, now serving the nation and beyond.

Visionary Leadership

in Land Conservation, Historic Preservation, Environmental Protection

Lawrence M.C. Smith and Eleanor Houston Smith were not only pioneers in organic farming. The work they did at the farm and through their broad philanthropy made them early leaders as well in land conservation, historic preservation, and the environmental movement in the state of Maine.

Casco Castle Tower Knowing its historic value and iconic symbolism for Freeport, the Smiths purchased the tower and surrounding land in South Freeport in 1955 and protected it from misuse. They sold it to a private owner aware of its historic importance in 1979.

Conservation Easements Both Wolfe’s Neck State Park and the Wolfe’s Neck Center are protected in perpetuity by overlapping conservation easements given by the Smiths to the State of Maine and the American Farmland Trust.

Harrington House, headquarters of the Freeport Historical Society The Smiths gave this historic property on Main Street to the historical society in 1977.

Harraseeket Historic District In 1972 Mr. Smith took James Mundy, director of the one-year-old Maine Office of Historic Preservation, and Earle Shettleworth, his new young employee, up the Harraseeket River in his boat to point out the rare historical character of this tidal estuary. Mr. Shettleworth followed up and wrote an application for historic district status under the new Historic Preservation Act of 1966; it was granted in 1974. It remains the largest historic district in the state of Maine. Mr. Shettleworth would later serve for many years as the state historian and the head of the Preservation Office. Wolfe’s Neck Center is included in the district.

Maine Maritime Museum The Smiths purchased the abandoned, historic Percy and Small Shipyard on the Kennebec River in Bath in 1968. They gave the property as the site for the new museum in 1974.

Mast Landing Audubon Sanctuary In 1955-1958 the Smiths acquired 145 acres at Mast Landing to preserve its historical and environmental assets. They gave the land to Maine Audubon in 1967.

Pettengill House and Farm The Smiths purchased the property in 1959, with life tenancy for Frank and Mildred Pettengill, and gave the house and the 140-acre farm to the Freeport Historical Society in 1975.

Popham Beach From 1960 to 1963 the Smiths quietly acquired about 200 acres on the ocean in Phippsburg to save them from development and held them until funds became available for a state park. The state purchased the property from the Smiths at their cost and dedicated and opened the park in July 1968.

Smith Center for Cartographic Education In 1983 Mrs. Smith donated the extraordinary collection of atlases, maps and globes that she and her husband had collected as a hobby to the University of Southern Maine. It exists today within the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education in the USM Glickman Family Library.

Stone Island, Machiasport The Smiths purchased 100 acres on the island in 1973 through Landguard Trust, an organization created by Mr. Smith in 1969 to promote the use of conservation easements to preserve open space, an innovative strategy at the time. The purchase prevented the development of Machiasport as the site for an oil port and refinery. They later sold the property at their cost to the Nature Conservancy.

Wolfe’s Neck Farm In 1984 Mrs. Smith and the six Smith children—Lewis, Eleanor Kenner, Sam, Sallie, Meredith, and Minie—gave the farm to the University of Southern Maine to be operated as a farm in perpetuity. Mr. Smith had passed away in 1975. In 1997 the University turned the farm over to the Wolfe’s Neck Farm Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the community and the Smith family that functions today as the Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment.

Wolfe’s Neck Woods State Park The Smiths gave 250 acres for the state park in 1969, along with an endowment for educational programming. It opened in 1973.