The Heart's Delight Farm Heritage Exhibit at Miner Institute is open to the public Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. from May through October. It is also open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays during July and August.
Chartered in 1951, the William H. Miner Agriculture Research Institute continues to operate under the same principles of research, education and demonstrations that William H. Miner promoted on Heart's Delight Farm in the early 1900s.
Miner Institute is a private, nonprofit educational organization.
For more information, call 846-7121 or visit www.whminer.org. The institute is located at 1034 Miner Farm Road in Chazy.
To pre-order Dr. Joseph Burke's new book, William H. Miner, the Man and the Myth, call Miner Institute or visit minerbiography@whminer.com.
illiam H. Miner, the extremely wealthy turn-of-the-century industrialist, inventor and North Country benefactor, believed that when it came to agriculture, "no other occupation is so vitally important to the human race."
This is the conclusion of Dr. Joseph Burke, former president of Plattsburgh State and chairman of the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute Board of Directors, who is nearing completion of a Miner biography titled "William H. Miner, the Man and the Myth."
To demonstrate to the community that it is keeping Miner's vision alive, the institute held an open house June 27 at the Chazy complex to showcase Miner Institute's history and its wide variety of research, educational and demonstration projects.
About 300 visitors were expected, but about 700 showed up despite rainy weather. "It was huge," Miner Institute President Rick Grant said.
The open house was inspired by an April 2008 $50,000 agri-tourism grant from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets that the institute matched. In part, the money was used to create a DVD titled "Miner Institute: 100 Years and Growing" about the history of the facility and Miner's vision of an ideal farm, which he called Heart's Delight. While many of the farm's original buildings are no longer standing, Miner's personal agricultural Shangri-La, located on the site where the institute now stands, has lived on as a key part of local history. As part of the Heart's Delight Farm Heritage Exhibit at the institute, a complete diorama of the old farm it its heyday with all it's sprawling facilities is featured,
The video, shown in a newly developed theater, chronicles the evolution of agricultural practice in Northern New York during the last century. A lot of that history was rediscovered when thousands of old historic photographic negatives from the early 1900s that show life when Miner's farm was in operation were unexpectedly found on the premises. Another portion of the grant money is being used to digitalize and catalog these old photos.
"It shows the history of Heart's Delight Farm, what people should know about," Grant said of the new DVD.
The grant, written by Librarian Amy Bedard, was one of 51 agri-tourism grants awarded in 2008 with only five being given out in the North Country.
Demonstrations of the institute's Morgan horses were also included at the open house as was food, give-aways and a petting station at the calf hutches. Educational exhibits and tours of the Heart's Delight Farm Heritage Exhibit, Wayside Walk and Coach House were part of the day's activities.
"The essence of agri-tourism is that the history gets you here," Grant said. But, he added, he hopes that people will also appreciate the research-related programs and facilities, such as the new state-of-the-art dairy barn, once they arrive.
"People don't want to visit to see a new dairy barn, the 99 percent of people who don't have a role in farming," Grant said. But once they're there, such facilities often catch their interest.
At Miner, history and agricultural innovation are closely entwined. "A century ago, most families were producing their own food. Today, only one percent of the population works on farms," Grant said
But it's still relevant for people to have knowledge of and appreciate modern agriculture, Grant believes, because the issues that confront agriculture today ultimately affect everybody.
The new dairy barn has been a focus of the latest research at the institute, including cow comfort and dairy nutrition. "We focus on dairy cattle well-being," Grant said.
In conjunction with Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, Miner Institute has been instrumental in developing software to provide the best diets for dairy cattle. "Thousands of people use it around the world," Grant said. "I think it's arguably the best software available for dairy-cattle diets."
On the well-being side, with the new dairy barn, Miner researchers are working on cattle grouping and how they're managed within the barn. It's important to have as many cows as possible in the barn to maximize profit, but the question is how many will it hold without compromising comfort and productivity.
This can provide a scientific basis for animal-welfare regulations before they are forced on farmers by well-intentioned but less-informed regulators, Grant said.
In the Miner barn, cows are not confined to stalls or tethered but are free to walk around in the barn's alleys and have mattresses to lie on. "I think that's better for the cows because they get better exercise that way," Grant said, adding that they can get up, lie down, eat and drink when they want to. "We really try to carry out William Miner's original vision for North County agriculture."
According to Burke, author of the new book, William Miner, orphaned at 10, grew up on a humble homestead in Chazy and went west to make his fortune. He built a leading railroad-appliance business in Chicago but later returned to his childhood home where he transformed the old Chazy homestead into a 15,000-acre model farm around the turn of the century.
Through his philanthropy, he also built Chazy Central Rural School, Physician's Hospital (now CVPH Medical Center) and a network of hydro-electric dams and powerhouses to provide electricity to the area. His foundation, of which Burke is a trustee, still funds the school, hospital and the institute.
Burke said Miner's vision included providing research and education relating to North Country agriculture to young people so they wouldn't have to leave the area to find work. "That's one of the things Miner Institute tries to do," Burke said.
According to the new DVD, Miner always believed everyone should know a great deal about the production of their food. It documents the developments in agriculture over 100 years as technology advanced, allowing the dwindling number of farmers to feed a growing population as it traces the evolution from homestead farming to agribusiness.
Miner believed in the miracles of technology and had electricity at his farm before the governor's mansion in Albany. Heart's Delight Farm tilled nearly every crop and housed nearly all types of domestic animals.
Today, in addition to increasing animal comfort, Miner Institute strives to deal with a host of modern problems such as reducing the carbon footprint of agriculture and avoiding polluting lakes and rivers.
According to the video, the greatest change from Miner's day has been the advancement from "machines to genes." Today, biotechnology can be more important to profitability than tractors. The use of herbicide-resistant crops has reduced the use of pesticides, for example, and antibiotics have improved animal health and welfare.
As William Miner himself believed, according to the new DVD: "We ignore scientific advances at our peril."
