'When the bottom drops out
this fast, it's just unbelievable'

By Charles Mathewson
� 1999, MPG Newspapers

PLYMOUTH - Will Stearns has a habit of chuckling in mid-sentence. He's not only an optimist. He's enjoyed 20 years of good fortune as a cranberry grower. The chuckle goes away when he talks about the future.

"It's been a wonderful ride," Stearns said. "But when the bottom drops out this fast, it's just unbelievable. Even if the market does recover, it will never come back like it was." The drop in cranberry prices means Stearns can no longer make a profit on his 42 acres of bogs. This year he and his son saved labor costs by picking the bogs by themselves.

"I turned 50 in July," Stearns said. "I can't do that kind of thing any more."

He laid the latest payment estimate from Ocean Spray on the table in the dining room with a panoramic view to his bogs. Ocean Spray pays growers $5 a barrel when they deliver berries to the plant in Middleboro. They get payment estimates a few months later, the balance of the payment 18 months later. The current estimate puts the total for Stearns at $15.50 a barrel. He used to get $70 a barrel.

"I can't turn my pumps on for that," Stearns said. "Here, it's the middle of December and look at those vines. They're all exposed. To protect them under water I have to pump four wells for three days. ComElectric loves me for that. It costs $3,000."

He does have another business to fall back on. With his cousin, Jack Heywood, he owns Stearns Irrigation, located beside his bogs and house off Federal Furnace Road. They sell agricultural irrigation systems. Their dealership agreement with suppliers prohibit them from selling household or golf course irrigation systems.

"So that's it for that business, too," Stearns said. "It's shot. If your business was tied into the cranberry business, you're done."

So, with two businesses devastated by the price drop, Stearns has gone golfing.

"I put in a new section of bog a few years ago," Stearns said. "I was on my tractor raking out the dirt on the upland and I thought, I really don't want to mow this the rest of my life just to grow grass here. For some reason, I thought I'd put in a couple of golf greens at either end. I don't know why. I didn't play golf at the time."

A friend advised him on the type of grass to plant. He seeded and bought a greens mower. The guys who worked the bogs took swings on their breaks. Four years later, Stearns had five holes, some practical knowledge of greens keeping and lots of good times with family and friends hitting balls over the bogs onto the greens.

"You can see one of the flags from the road," he said. "I had some guys come up the driveway saying they'd been looking all over for the clubhouse."

Now, five years later, he's switched plans for 12 more acres of bogs into a plan for an 18-hole golf course.

"All three of my children were home here one weekend," Stearns said. "I said, everybody come up with an alternative use for the land. We sure can't make it any more with cranberries. We had dumps and amusement parks and everything we could think of. We kept coming back to the golf course."

The Stearns family go into the cranberry business in the early 1950s when Will Stearns I and II bought the land. Will Stearns III bought it from his father in 1978. He and his son want to keep the land in the family.

"No one wants to put in a subdivision," Stearns said. "My neighbors have had nothing but woods in their back yard. They don't want another subdivision behind them."

Those neighbors went to town hall to support the golf course idea Monday night.

"The prospect of keeping the area around us open appeals to my wife and I and our neighbors," said Mike Pruett of Federal Furnace Road. "I understand the economic pressures on cranberry growers now and I understand Will has to do something with the land. We much prefer a golf course to a subdivision."

The planning board unanimously approved the special permit to allow the golf course and two house lots on 120 acres of upland.

The plan includes landscaping along Federal Furnace Road, a 3,200 square foot clubhouse for golf-related functions only, an 87-space parking lot and buffers between the adjacent residential neighborhood and Federal Furnace Elementary School.

Plymouth architect Nicholas Filla designed the course and the clubhouse. A planning board member, Filla left the town hall meeting room during the discussion and vote Monday night.

The plan still needs the approval of the conservation commission.

Stearns, who built his house from timber he cleared from the land, will build the course with the help of his family. He hopes to open it to the public in the late spring of 2001.

He will continue to keep up the bogs, if for no other reason than to create scenic obstacles on the course.

"The frightening thing about this is, you don't know how long it will take for the market to come back," Stearns said. "There are certain things you have to do. If you ignore certain types of weeds, like dodder, they will kill the bog. The only thing to do is scalp it and start over. It takes three years for vines to take root, five years to get a new bog up to production."

Not every grower can put a golf course on their upland to pay for their bogs until the market comes back. Given the current prices for berries, and with the price of bog land dropping in half, some growers won't be able to get financing to do what needs to be done to keep the bogs going until the 18-month crop payment comes in.

Stearns will call the golf course Southers Meadow, after a former owner of all the marsh and bog land on that part of the Plymouth/Carver line. The "furnace" in Federal Furnace smelted iron cannon balls out of bog iron. When land owners took all the iron out of the bogs, they turned to a new use for the land - cultivating cranberries. The current owners of the land may have to find similarly surprising uses. "Some of the older growers don't have mortgages," Stearns said. "But everyone is struggling. Fortunately we have good economic times right now, so your workers can find other jobs. Growers are a resourceful bunch. I tried Christmas trees on my upland and, for me, it was a disaster. Others can make it work. The golf course looks good for me right now. Other growers will have to be creative, too."