URIs_MOMENTUM_Research_and_Innovation_Magazine_Spring_2022_M

routinely met on the farm, held public events, and asked college researchers to explore growing techniques and pest management. A cider mill processed the apples, shipping the cider to market while extra apples went to campus dining halls.

The apple research proved to be ahead of its time. The public had not yet embraced novel apple varieties and shunned them in favor of common varieties, says Heather Faubert ’81 and ’12, a URI research associate who has studied the history of the apple research at the farm. Alongside the apple research were chickens. Lots and lots of chickens. An influential poultry industry kept researchers busy finding better ways to rear the chickens, while keeping them healthy and improving egg production. At the center of the poultry research stood Wayne Durfee, ’50 and ’53. He was a Navy veteran who attended URI as a student and went on to serve on the faculty for 38 years teaching students in the methods of poultry raising and processing. As a student, Durfee was charged by administrators with keeping an eye on the place. From his perch in a three-room house on the property, he monitored the hens living on the farm for an annual egg laying contest. Started in the 1930s, the annual contest brought flocks of hens from upwards of 50 farms throughout the country. A dutiful attendant checked the hens five times daily for eggs and recorded egg weight and size. The contest and the farm enthralled Durfee enough that after graduation he joined the faculty as a poultry professor and got to work designing new facilities to raise and study poultry. A Quonset Hut served as a “It was an exciting time,” Durfee says.

STEVEN ALM Professor Plant Sciences and Entomology

SPRING | 2022 Page 31