Hire a Beaver

When we became stewards of this abandoned apple farm, we learned from the original farmer’s 93 year old son that beaver were known to enter and attempt to re-engineer his irrigation pond which would flood the orchards. So beavers were trapped and kept away––yet over the near forty years it was no longer farmed––the beavers came back and transformed the farmland into a full ecosystem of thriving wetland habitat: plants, trees, fish, crawdads, ducks, heron, stork, bald eagles, hawks, river otter, bobcat, fox, coyote, skunks, deer, black bear and a universe of insects.

The topography of this land ultimately determines the extent of which this land may revert back to wetland of which one-third of its 70 acres have now become as engineered by the beavers.

This land had other engineers as well and was once de-forested for build materials to a growing Manhattan centuries ago as well as growing vast fields of food for New York and beyond. All of this now is returning to new forests and habitats among the wild apple trees by the beaver –– and allows us perfect example of wetland and farm to devote for study and projects in agriculture, water conservation, energy and ideas.