Located just minutes away from the main campus, Uplands Farm consists
of three greenhouses with 5,000 square feet of growing space and
a series of growth chambers, and twelve acres of fields where crops
are rotated biannually. Its agrarian atmosphere provides a striking complement to
the high-tech neuroscience labs and the Genome Center.
|
"Uplands
Farm has a pretty big history. At the turn of the century, the property
was cleared, the buildings were built, and an active dairy farm
ran right up through the 1950s. The
folks who owned it conducted research on DDT here. They sprayed
the fields, and had the cows graze, and they were able to follow
the trail of the DDT through the milk, which led to DDT being banned.
"The Nature Conservancy
was able to purchase the property, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
then purchased 12 acres in 1984, and we put these greenhouses up
and farm it to this day.
"I would
say that the best part of working here is being a small part of
all the research that goes on here. Even though it’s a small
part of that research, it’s still probably the most important
part because you can’t understand DNA in plants if you don’t
have any plants."
—Tim Mulligan, manager of Uplands Farm
|