Traveler: Matt Schaefer
Destination: Ocean Hour Farm in Newport, RI

Last summer Matt Schaefer had the opportunity to experience a different side of Newport’s past. During his visit, he toured a historic farm, one that offered a quieter, more intimate perspective on the region’s architectural and cultural legacy and revealed how Newport’s history extends well beyond its famed oceanfront estates.

Newport, Rhode Island is best known for the historic mansions of the Gilded Age and the early twentieth century. While I highly recommend visiting the grandest and most impressive Newport estates that are preserved as museums, last summer I had a unique opportunity to visit a different kind of historic property: a farm. This farm was originally built as a part of the Arthur Curtiss James estate and has lived many different lives over the years, but it was recently revived as Ocean Hour Farm, an organization that teaches about the connection between our life on land and the health of the ocean. Ocean Hour Farm offers public tours every summer where one can learn about both the history of the place and how it contributes to a better future. The blend of historic architecture, deliberate landscaping, sustainable farming practices, eager educational offerings, and inspirational mission made my tour of Ocean Hour Farm a uniquely beautiful experience.

As you enter Ocean Hour Farm, after idling down a willow-lined drive, you arrive at a lawn hugged by stone buildings with tile roofs and grand archways.

The impressive stone compound was modeled after a Swiss village and was built to house the farm workers as well as guests to the James estate. The Swiss Village housed over a hundred workers at its peak and is now home to Ocean Hour Farm’s offices.

The housing was not the only thing built with a Swiss flair. Several farm structures, like the chicken coop above, are topped with a rounded shingle roof. This was where they began teaching about regenerative farming practices – the chickens feed in the adjacent gardens, fertilizing the ground as they go. The mulch in their nest boxes is built up over time before it finds a second life as compost in the farm’s fields.

Sheep are raised at the farm for their wool, but they also play an important role in the restoration of the soil as they graze. They are rotated around the property to prevent overgrazing a single spot, all the time protected by their guardian llama, Nyx.

Everyone on the farm plays a role in land stewardship. For the pigs, that role is giving degraded land a hard reset by rooting up plants, including any invasives. Every couple of days, the pigs are moved further down the row, leaving behind a spectrum of regenerating plots progressing from mud to a collage of native grasses and shrubs whose seeds were still in the soil, waiting for the opportunity to grow.

Much of the land on the farm consists of pastures of perennial flowers that are managed with the help of the animals mentioned above, creating a beautiful vista for the neighbors’ hilltop homes. Managing land this way requires no pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, which, back to Ocean Hour Farm’s mission, keeps runoff from polluting the ocean and harming local marine life.

On an adjacent property, Ocean Hour Farm is growing a food forest, which once fully grown will have fruit trees, root vegetables, and a full spectrum of edible plants in between. Even in its early stage, the forest is providing habitat for wildlife as well as food for people.

Take note of the weathervane on top of the chimney in the upper left of this photo. Everything about Ocean Hour Farm, from the new to the historic, points to the organization’s mission to educate about the connection between land and sea. There could hardly be a purpose more quintessentially Newport, a port city at the mouth of the Narragansett Bay in the Ocean State. Tours are limited to specific dates in the summertime, but it is worth every effort to visit and be inspired by this place!