Picture This: Where Exactly is Great Meadowbrook Farm?

By Mary Ward

If you don’t know where the racetrack at Great Meadowbrook Farm will be located, don’t feel bad. The farm is beautiful but isn’t a major attraction. The town isn’t in a convenient location. It wasn’t even the investors’ first choice. Or their second. Or third.

I’d encourage you to go see just where this racetrack will be situated. Immerse yourself in the experience as you drive these country roads. Picture yourself living here. It’s a nice drive for a slow Sunday afternoon. Don’t worry about getting stuck at a red light. There aren’t any. Don’t worry about the traffic. There isn’t any. At least not yet.

As you go, take in the scenery and the houses. Some new, many quite historic. All homes.

It’ll take you quite a while to get to Hardwick. The town is a minimum of a half hour (+) off any major highway. As in, just to find the town.

If you don’t have time for the drive (it is quite a long ride to here from anywhere), maybe take a virtual “walk” through the town on Google Maps. If you only have time for a road or two, take a stroll down Upper Church Street or Barre Road.

To get to the farm, it won’t be hard to decide on a route; there are only a few options.

Where to Find Great Meadowbrook née Goodfield’s Guernsey Dell Farm

You can start in the Village of Gilbertville and take Hardwick Road (also Massachusetts Route 32A) up to the center and turn right at Mimi’s Coffeehouse. Please mind the 25 mile per hour speed limit by the Hardwick House of Pizza; there are children riding bikes and skateboards, walking to the store, and crossing the road to dance classes.

Once you are out of Gilbertville Village, you can increase your legal speed to 35 mph. If you find yourself inching faster, please pump the brakes. And be sure to slow down and wave to the donkey on your right as you come toward the center of town (where the speed limit drops again to 30).

You can also come into Hardwick at the “top” of the center via the other end of this same Massachusetts Route 32A from the smaller town of Petersham. Not far over the line into town, you’ll see Still Life Farm with its fields and greenhouses full of vegetables to feed people from Hardwick to Boston. It is also the historic site of the Old Town Farm, a community precursor to today’s assistance programs that housed and fed people who had fallen on hard times. If you see Curt or Halley around, ask about joining their local Winter CSA. They’re raising a hard-working next generation farmer here, too, so be mindful of the children, and the child-like dogs.

Again, please respect the speed reduction near Eagle Hill School and through the center—30 mph. There are many Eagle Hill students who walk to their athletic fields on an adjacent road or to the center for a change of fare and a warm coffee. They pass local kids walking and biking to and fro, too. Once you are in Hardwick center, take a left towards Barre Road. You have three chances to make the turn and cross on our little cut-offs through the common, so don’t worry if you miss the first (or second) little street. But do wait and take your turn at the stop at the end.

Photo by Above the Law Aerial Imagery

West Side Story

This might be a faster route, albeit certainly the longest. There are sections of this road that go up as high as 40 mph (with some down to 30) but be warned there are parts that are very winding and not appropriate for high speeds of this nature. You’ll be traveling in from the town of Ware, though finding the road that leads through West Hardwick to the center might be difficult. Just tap “Stillmans Quality Meats” or “Hardwick Winery” into your app of choice. You will probably be ready for a break and some refreshment, so plan a stop for some Stillman's roasting meats or a freshener (or bathroom!!) at the Winery.

Once you find one of those businesses, continue on that road for many miles until you are absolutely positive you missed a turn or a town somewhere. Just about then, you should come out at a stop sign at the end of Greenwich Road. Go straight across one-eighth of a mile to the next stop sign. Proceed straight ahead and in about half a mile you’ll come upon the farm and house at Goodfield’s farm.

The kids in the “West Part” are more likely to be on bikes since the distances between homes and locations stretches out quite a bit. Be careful of the fishing rods sticking out into the road.

There are frequently hunters and fishermen and trucks with boats and trailers in tow. This part of town dips into the vanished towns and wilderness that were taken for the Quabbin Reservoir to provide clean drinking water to distant Boston.

Photo by Dean Pariseau

If These Don’t Get You There...

There are two other options to get to the farm in the middle of our triangle of a center.

The larger of the two routes (larger being a relative term, not an indication of the size road that you might expect to lead to a major racing destination), is Barre Road via Massachusetts Route 32/Lower Road. To reach it, you’ll come from either bucolic New Braintree (fair warning, there is a State Police training facility there—slow down) or from Gilbertville (kids!) or through Barre to the Wheelwright Village.

Just over the Barre/Hardwick line where the village of Wheelwright begins, look for the sign for W.R. Robinson Lumber, a business that has helped to build homes here for 50 years. It’s a good indication that you’re on the right track. The Robinson name has graced several farms, too, including a cheese business that has recently achieved the [nearly] impossible and seamlessly transitioned to the new, young farmer-producers of Round Table Farm.

Continue on this road through the Village of Wheelwright. Wheelwright is one of those little off-shoot type of neighborhoods we all wish we grew up in. Kids swarm the sidewalks and sometimes the streets. They might have the biggest bus stops in town (school, not public—there is no public transportation here). On weekends they walk and ride to the two recreational ball fields in the village. To be honest this route has bits and pieces that are as fast as 45, so it’s a bit of an exaggeration to claim the West as a fast route.

As you take the turn up Barre Road towards the Goodfield property, you will be passing through the Old Furnace Village of Hardwick, which is loosely defined by the new Old Furnace General Store and the landing on the river near where the Revolutionary War-era “furnaces” were. The furnaces produced cannon balls for the Revolutionary Army. The road here begins with some blind corners and steep curves through a residential neighborhood that is again littered with children. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, please drive slowly and obey the traffic signs: a low clearance bridge and detour, multiple blind drives, dangerous intersections, and deep curves, to name a few.

This winding road then climbs up through the Clover Hill Farm property. Turn in for some sausage or burger. Best you’ve ever eaten. Here, you should know that cows have the right of way. No, really. It’s the law. And there is a grandbaby on the way we all cannot wait to meet. There are often slow tractors and cows crossing or turning into the road. Oh, and manure. Steve is pretty meticulous about the road in front of the farm, but where there are cows...

The final approach is to take Upper Church Street from the Gilbertville end towards the center of town. It is something of a country crossroad. Please mind what was said about driving through Gilbertville, (those kids). Also, please, please keep an eye out as you travel the length of Upper Church. It’s a winding road. You’ll need to use caution and be sure to stay to your side of the road. There isn’t a lot of room to move over. There aren’t marked lanes the whole length of the road. The suggested speed limit here is 25. Signs here warn of rough roads, curves, children, the need to reduce speed, and tractors in the road. There are steep parts with blind corners where tractors and trucks have come to collide.

And there are kids! There are kids living the entire length of Upper Church Street, too, all the way from its beginning in Gilbertville to the tip-top where it turns into the Guernsey Dell/Great Meadowbrook property. Running with their dogs in their yards that are literally within feet of the boundary line and the end of the property where the racetrack will sit.

These are the children of the older children of Hardwick. These are the children of my friends. They are the children of relative newcomers (some of whom I’ve also raised a glass with) who moved to this quiet town for its safety and good living. They have pets and goats and flighty things that are also in the road at times. Country life. These are very important children to me; to us all. I say again, please be mindful of them.

Drive Like Your Kids or Grandkids or Friends’ Kids Live here

If you’re wondering by now, why are there so many kids in Hardwick? Can there possibly be so many kids?

It is because, you see, Hardwick is a place of homes. Even the farms that are businesses are homes. With the exception of Great Meadowbrook, it’s hard to think of a farm in town that is not also an owner-occupied home.

Driving Through the Goodfield/Great Meadowbrook Property

Now that you’ve found the location, take a drive up to the former Goodfield Guernsey Dell farm property. You can drive through (for now, while the roads are open) what are essentially the centers of the property. These are all town roads, all public ways. You’re certainly not doing anything wrong when you travel them. That’s what they are there for.

You’ll find the beginning of the racetrack location at the corner of Upper Church Street and Barre Road. It begins not far out of the center of Hardwick (or about a mile before it if you come in from Lower Road/Rt. 32/Barre Road access) and travels slowly down to the site of the old milking barn and the Goodfield home (a home I am proud to say I remember fondly as the place I met my Hardwick boy, my husband, close to 30 years ago...funny because I don’t even feel that old).

At the home site and barn, the property can be followed either by taking a right up Upper Church Street, or by continuing on Barre Road. Both the left and right sides of the road are part of the Goodfield property on Barre Road.

Photo by Dean Pariseau

To see the whole property, you’ll need to turn left onto the dead-end Simpson Road, which then turns into a hiking, biking, and walking trail which the “locals” (I mean real locals, not three-decade newcomers like me) call “Deer Park”. Newer locals (of the three-decade and more recent variety) might know it better as the Coxhall Kitchen Garden property of the East Quabbin Land Trust (EQLT). To your left on this road, there is a hay field. To the right, the backyard of a young family with children, and straight ahead, where the road ends and the trail starts, a treasure of a well-tucked private home and gardens.

Off to the Races...

Backtracking and taking the Upper Church Street route from the Hardwick Center end, you’ll crest the rise to a spot where some of the most valuable prime agricultural soils in the area flatten out to what those older Hardwickians call “the 20-acre lot”. The land is so agriculturally valuable that it has been classified as prime agricultural soils by the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture and was placed under contract with Mr. Chester “Chet” Goodfield before the turn of the century/millennium (the 2000’s millennium) into an agreement called an Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR). APR properties are restricted from non-farming or forestry uses and their development (building) rights are restricted so that we can save those few-and-far-between prime soils.

This is where the racetrack will be. Unless it’s stopped.

Photo by Michael LeClair Photography

Again, both sides of the road are part of the Goodfield [Great Meadowbrook] property. These are lovely, lush green hay fields that have served the farm variously as grazing pasture, corn fields, and hay fields. The street has beautiful hand-made stone walls lined with native hardwood trees. It’s a place of beauty and a stunning sight to see. We around here are so very lucky that our public ways include such a place of beauty to walk, ride, bike, and drive on our way to school, work, the local Farmer’s Co-op, or just out for a Sunday drive.

If you follow this route through the property to its end, you’ll soon come upon houses. Residential houses. The house with the kids and dogs that borders the racetrack and the house across from it where one of the hardest-working retired couples lives. Wave if you see them, which you’re likely to do; they are always out planting or digging their diverse plantings of flowering bulbs, berry bushes, and more. Spring through fall, the sides of the road are decorated with a palate of colorful blooms. I think there might be a donkey that lives there, too (at least there used to be).

Follow, Too, the Golden Rule

Respect us in our home as you would have us respect you in yours. Please see that this is a home. Hardwick is a home. Hardwick is our home.

Please have some patience and take care with the people you meet here. Not everyone may be at their best. This is a town under great stress and pressure; one that has been divided and pressured by this proposed gambling business as people here fight for their livelihoods, their homes, and their lives as they know it. We here are fighting fragile, strong, and determined all at the same time.

A Final Note to Our Neighbors:

If you are lucky enough for Hardwick to be your home—if you are a resident of any of the villages of Gilbertville, Wheelright, Old Furnace, Hardwick, or West Hardwick—please consider these roads and neighborhoods you drive through as you would consider your own.

Consider that if you lived along any of these direct routes, or if these were or are your yards, that you would hope someone would help you protect them and you and yours, as we hope that you will help to protect these homes, these children, these farmers, their animals; these neighborhoods and families.

Consider that the proposal in question requires the closure of at least a length of Upper Church Street for food trucks, gamblers, attendees, and (via the artist rendering on the CEAC website) for the framing of a spectator grandstand that will land on the pavement on this public road. Consider that this will happen several times a year, increasing in number of days (to an as yet undisclosed number) as the business and track gain speed over the next five years. Consider that closures will occur not only for race days, but for days before and after for setup, breakdown, and cleanup.

Now consider this on your street. In your literal front yard.

Ask yourself: Is it reasonable to allow a business to close my residential road?

Is it fair or reasonable to allow a for-profit business—of any type—to not only make your neighborhood uncomfortable and unrecognizable, but to limit your access to your own home? Is it reasonable to allow a multi-million-dollar entity, a corporation, to tell you when your road will be open; when you can drive it or walk it; when you can go to work or your kids go to school, as part of a business plan? Why would this be the business plan of an ongoing business? One that plans to stay and to expand?

Would you want this for you?

If your answer is “No,” then so too must your vote on January 7th be.

Vote NO for yourself. Vote NO for your neighbors. Vote NO for your chosen way of life and for the chosen way of life of your neighbors.

Vote NO because it is the right thing. For you, for them, for the villages, for Hardwick.