The Middle Island Game
Farm
Patchogue Advance
March 25,
1971
By Thomas R. Bayles
Windsor Gow is
manager of the 185-acre New York State Middle Island Game Farm which is
located in Ridge. Mr. Gow came here as manager in 1949 and with Mrs.
Gow and their four children has lived on the farm. For more than 40
years Windsor has worked closely with deer quail and pheasants on game
farms of the New York State Conversation Department.
For years, the
farm in Ridge has produced thousands of pheasants and within the past
few years has switched to quail, which are distributed throughout the
state. Raising quail is now being phased out and in the future the farm
will be used as a conservation headquarters, open to the public and
groups of school children to visit and learn more about nature.
Taking a tip
from nature, Windsor has applied the principles of naturally grown foods
to his family diet. For years he has cultivated a one-acre garden with
fruits and vegetables raised the organic way. Composting and mulching
help keep his garden green and lush in the driest weather. Soybeans add
nitrogen to the soil and green crops are plowed under for green manure.
For several
years he has been getting pigeon manure from a large pigeon farm north
of Ridge. This is applied in the fall and winter, either by working it
into the soil then or by letting the winter rains carry it into the
ground.
As he
explains, it should never be applied as a top dressing as it is very
strong and can cause damage from burning.
The
addition of phosphate rock and agricultural lime as needed round out his
soil program. He also takes the pine shavings that have been used as
bedding material for the quail he raises on the game farm and uses them
as mulch.
He does
get some insect pests in the garden, but these cause only minor damage.
Abundant flocks of birds that thrive on this chemical free farm help
clean up the bugs. He has even seen starlings, a bird that has few
human friends, eagerly feeding on Japanese beetle grubs emerging from
the soil.
Windsor
points with pride to the small mill in which he grinds flour from home
grown wheat, which he grows under organic conditions. Soy beans enter
the picture here as a supplement to the wheat flour.
The ripe
pods are picked and stored in the barn to dry, and then shelled. Some
of the beans are cooked whole, like navy beans, while the rest are
ground in the flour mill to make a nutritious, protein rich addition to
the wheat flour. The whole wheat flour with the added soy bean flour
goes into the healthful loaves of bread that Mrs. Gow bakes.
As Mr.
Gow says, “If we can learn to live with nature, and not fight her, we
can be a lot happier and healthier.”
Windsor
is retiring and next spring when his wife Mary also reties from teaching
in the ridge school, they will move to Shernurne, their original home,
where they have already bought a home with seven acres of land. As
apple orchard will be started there, and his gardening continued.