Welcome to 'Farmville' at Bonaventure

Image courtesy of University ArchivesWomen may not have been allowed on campus until 1958, but before that, St. Bonaventure University welcomed an integrated group of male students, friars and pigs.

From 1904 to 1952, the university raised its own farm, which, at its peak, housed 65 dairy cows and 600 pigs and brought in 6,000 bushels of potatoes and 1,500 bushels of oats. The farm extended over 200 acres across what are now McGraw-Jennings Fields, according to university archives.

While the university did have some specific employees in place to work the farm, most of the labor came from the students through a sort of work-study program. Imagine lining up on the hill to work fields and milk cows rather than watch a baseball game.

Eventually, changing times and an increased desire to spend more effort on education brought the ultimate closing of the farm.

"It came down to silos versus studies," Dennis Frank, university archivist, said. "And students became a little bit more absorbed in their study schedules and didn't have the time available, apparently, to shovel manure."

Before its closing, though, the farm suffered the same unfortunate luck the university itself is notorious for. Fires and floods plagued the farm during its nearly 50 years of operation. In one particularly memorable catastrophe, the flood of 1942, a small group of students and instructors, fearing the pigs would drown, rushed a makeshift wooden raft out to the fields and hoisted and dragged the animals to safety. Out of 150 pigs, only one perished in the flood, according to archives.

The motivation for the farm came down to three reasons: St. Francis, location and frugality.

Frank said the flood planes here made for unusually good soil for this part of the country. Growing their own food helped keep costs down for the university and, consequently, the students.

"If the economy keeps going the way it is, we may have to get rid of athletics and go back to farming," Frank said, laughing.

It seemed the university community had found a way to dodge the often-hefty cost of primarily purchasing food from outside sources. Of course, having produced mostly milk, pork and potatoes, the farm couldn't provide everything the students craved.

"I suspect the boys got tired of pork after a while," Frank said. "So they would have had to bring in green vegetables and anything else they were interested in. But that was exactly what it was for: to put food on the table of the various cafeterias over the years."

Of course, farming comes down to more than just money, especially in the Franciscan tradition.

"That is a part of our heritage," said Brother Bob Struzynski, O.F.M. "It's because of the values. It's a contemplative thing, too, to be out in nature and to be farming, to be working in the garden. It's very helpful for deepening your own silence and your sense of contemplation. It fits in very, very well that way in spirituality."

Frank said while the farm was active and running constantly, it didn't have much of an impact on the typical Bonaventure day.

"It was one of those things like the guys cutting the lawn, you know," he said. "I suspect it was there, people were aware of it, and when the wind was from the wrong way they were very aware of it, but it didn't impinge on day-to-day life all that much . As most of us, when we go to dinner, we don't think about where that potato came from."

e-mail: fioravam@sbu.edu