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While the challenges continue, so do the good works done by our neighbors, our teachers, our health care providers, our volunteers and so many others. This is their story. Ledyard National Bank is proud to support the 2024 Hometown Heroes, who were nominated by members of the community and selected by editors of the Concord Monitor. Nominate your Hometown Hero Today. |
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| | Hometown Hero: Merrimack County grounds supervisor John Silver grows thousands of pounds of vegetables for nursing home, prison, and food pantries
By RACHEL WACHMAN Monitor staff
John Silver wandered through the carefully curated rows of peppers, squash, watermelon, cucumbers, and green beans, all grown by him. He leaned over, plucked a hot pepper from a bush, and took a bite.
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| “I learned this from my father,” he said. “This is what I did as a kid, with gardens and cows.”
Silver, a lifelong Boscawen resident, grew up on a large dairy farm. Now he runs the Merrimack County Farm as the grounds maintenance supervisor, taking care of the 600-acre property upon which sits the Merrimack County Nursing Home and the Department of Corrections. He oversees a crew of maintenance staff and a rotating handful of inmates from the county jail.
His current garden, which yields over 8,000 pounds of produce a year, started off several decades ago as a small patch of land behind the main barn. In nearly four decades under Silver’s green thumb, the land has transformed from a little berry and flower garden into a robust operation that eventually inspired Silver to expand to the half-acre plot down the hill off the other side of the Daniel Webster Highway. Several rows of fruit trees also sit behind the barn. Silver intends to transplant them to create an orchard later this month.
“We’ll go down the rows and we’ll pick everything,” Silver said. “You’ve got your peppers and tomatoes, y our celery, your basil, summer squash, it’s all in different baskets. Across the street, we weigh everything on a scale. Once we have an idea of what we’ve got, then I’ll divide it up.”
He brings the 27 varieties of produce he grows to the kitchens of the nursing home and prison and then donates the extra to Merrimack County Conservation District, which distributes the food to pantries across the county.
“That way nothing goes to waste, because you can only use so much of it,” Silver added. “So I kind of outsource that way, as long as it’s all getting used, nothing’s getting wasted.”
Sherrie Kneeland, director of food services at the nursing home, said recently she’s made stuffed peppers, stuffed zucchini, basil pesto, and tomato sauce, all from the vegetables Silver brings in. The nursing home also recently held a farm-to-table meal for Alzheimer’s patients who reconnected with the earth and the food they ate or grew in their pasts.
“John Silver is great. I don’t think there’s a person in this building that doesn’t like him,” Kneeland said. “He’s a hard worker. He cares about the residents, he cares about us using his vegetables, and he cares about the county saving money.”
Sometimes she requests certain vegetables. Other times, if Silver has a surplus of something, she’ll adapt the menu to accommodate that.
“The residents love it. They wish we could do it all year long,” Kneeland added.
Stacy Luke, who works as district manager for the Merrimack County Conservation District, said Silver is “a great farmer.” She receives produce from him that she distributes to local food pantries, youth centers, and schools with backpack programs that send children home with food.
“Oftentimes fresh produce is hard to access for the food pantries and all the other places we bring food to because it’s expensive and has a shorter lifespan,” Luke explained. “A lot of these places don’t have much refrigeration. When you have limited dollars, produce is not something a place might put a lot of their money into. This allows for a greater variety and much more nutritious food than the stuff they get that’s canned.”
It takes Silver and his team an hour and a half to pick all the produce from the half-acre field and greenhouse. He wouldn’t be able to do it all without the help of inmates on work release. He works with up to five incarcerated men on a given day, showing them how to plant seeds and help curate vegetable growth. They want to learn and do a good job assisting in groundskeeping, Silver said.
“It keeps them busy,” Silver said. “They’d rather be out here doing this than sitting in there. There’s always something different out here. We’re in the garden, we’re weed whacking, we’re mowing, we’re plowing snow. We’re moving stuff here or there.”
Merrimack County facilities director Dustin Muzzey explained that the inmates who work with Silver operate through the Community Corrections Program, which takes a rehabilitative and therapeutic approach to incarceration.
“The ones that come outside for work are getting something out here,” Muzzey said. “They feel some value to what they’re doing in the day.”
The program aims to reduce recidivism and set inmates up for success after they are released, he noted.
“That’s the goal, to give them some life skills and positive mechanisms that they can use to keep themselves out of trouble,” Muzzey said.
In his 38 years with the county, Silver has participated in different farming initiatives on-site, from raising pigs, cows, and chickens to selling flowers, hay, and wood. As the garden thrives, he strives to keep innovating his techniques and dreaming big for the farm. When he asked for a greenhouse, the county made it possible for him to expand his growing. When someone donated hot pepper seeds, he decided to plant them to see what would happen.
“John is the backbone of the whole game. He really loves his work,” Muzzey said. “Now, obviously it helps when you have a guy that grew up in an agricultural family, grew up farming. He’s been around it his whole life. He really is a big asset to us. He’s also taught his employees the same.”
Over his 38 years on the job, Silver has adapted to a lot. His current biggest challenges are unpredictable weather, especially particularly wet seasons, pests that feast on his plants, and a woodchuck who snacks on the lettuce and cauliflower.
While there’s always something else to do, Silver said, the garden provides him with a slice of serenity.
“I like the garden. It’s quiet,” he said. “You can come down here and do a little bit of work. I don’t have to worry about things here.”
Silver speaks with humility about the garden’s growth under his care.
“We always had a little garden here that was really small, and we never really thought we’d go bigger,” he said. “But as time progressed, this is where we’ve gone now.”
Then Silver adds with a grin that he hoped to see it grow to this size.
“My plows kept going. My tractor wouldn’t stop. No brakes,” he joked. “We started and kept going. It’s a big scale.”
Rachel Wachman can be reached at [email protected].
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