Ashfield Stone is a mica garnet Schist. Schist is a naturally layered stone having been folded up from ancient seabed and metamorphosed in the slow crush of continents some 400 million years ago. This wonderful and versatile stone has been used traditionally for over 300 years in it's chisel split or cleft form. All of the oldest gravestones, doorsteps, walls, walkways, patios, doorsteps and hearths in this region have been fashioned from this stone.
We purchased the land in Ashfield Massachusetts in 1984 with the intention of clearing some of the woodland and building our home and barns with our own materials. We were friendly with a neighbor, Ted Howes an octogenarian who took an interest in our plans and who had a wealth of history of the area to share with us. He became a dear friend and mentor over the years. Early on he told us that his grandfather, Robert Howes, had once owned our land and had used it as a woodlot. Ted recalled a story that his grandfather had once paid a man $16 to draw out some of the wonderful flat stone from a ledge there with a team of oxen and a stone boat and deliver it for use in his barn cellar (this was pre-cement in the late 1800's). This fact intrigued Jerry and he explored the woods for the source of this flat stone when he wasn't cutting logs to be milled for lumber for our house and barns. When he finally found the ledge, he cleared it back of topsoil and roots, purchased some hand chisels and learned to split the stone into its silvery layers.
This was in the late 80's. The country was into a recession, the construction business was slow. Johanne had given birth to their daughter and left her teaching position. Jerry had used some of the split stone in a small residential project in Old Deerfield and the clients and their neighbors were very taken with the stone. Slowly, the idea of actually quarrying the unique natural resource in our backyard took hold. In 1988 we went to the town and got our permit to open our quarry. Jerry and one employee learned to read the stone and split it along its natural layers with hammer and chisel. We sold wall stone, patio stone and doorsteps. We purchased an old dump truck and made deliveries. Soon we were hiring and training more men and subletting out the trucking. The business grew as the public's taste for natural stone in their landscapes and gardens grew. We were (and continue to be) the subjects of a lot of press. The story of finding and profiting from a natural resource in your own backyard makes for interesting reading. This free advertising was a boon to our business. We were written up in Yankee Magazine, local newspapers and have been featured on two television shows: Home and Garden TV and recently, The Discovery Channel's Planet Green/ Renovation Nation show with Steve Thomas from this Old House. He spent a half a day here filming our operation and emphasizing the “green” elements of our product and production. Right from the beginning we recognized the importance of a good relationship with our community. We strive to be good neighbors and we have had a continuing policy of stone donations to the town of Ashfield and the surrounding communities. We recently donated memorial benches to the Ashfield Plain Cemetery for the war memorial. We donated the war memorial for the Town of Charlemont. Currently we are working on a large stone slab that will have bronze plaques mounted as a war memorial for the Town of Buckland. We were invited to produce stone pavers that will be used to represent Massachusetts in a 50 state stone walkway that will wind through Phoenix Park, a memorial for the people lost from the attacks on the World Trade Center. These are just a few of the many ways we have given back to the region for their support and pride in our local stone.
In 1991, Jerry wondered what else we could do with this stone besides splitting it for landscaping. He brought a block up to the granite town of Barre, Vermont and found a fabricator willing to cut and polish a piece. The results were stunning. We had some more cut and finished and soon a famous sculptor, Michael Singer from Vermont heard about us and introduced us to the well known Boston Architectural firm of Kallman, McKinnel and Wood. This firm was looking for a stone to be included in their design for the Beckton Dickinson Corporate Headquarters in Franklin Lakes New Jersey. They chose our stone to be sawn for the forecourt. We contracted with a saw house in Barre to saw and finish our stone. This was a huge project for us. Following right on the heels of this project came another flooring project designed by a famous architect who teaches at Harvard University named Raphael Moneo. This was the entry hall floor for the new Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College. Both of these projects were very large and very prestigious. We learned so much from from these initial projects. The primary lesson was that we wanted to control the cutting and production of our stone in- house. We mortgaged our home, got a CDC loan and commissioned two bridge saws to be built in Barre, Vt . We retrofitted our existing cow/hay barn to become our fabrication facility. This shop was completed in 1992. We have added on and made some modifications since than, but this original building is where we continue to do all of our fabrication as of today, but.......we are currently building a new 8500 sq ft fabrication facility in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. This new shop will be open by late fall of this year. The state-of-the-art equipment we are installing will allow us to cut and finish stone in a much more efficient way. We will be able to take on much larger projects and also have a standing inventory of slabs. Our planking is a unique and exciting product. It can be used on the floor or on walls. Jerry has designed a new sawing system that will produce planking or tile starting from the gauging, the finishing and then the cutting the stone to size.
Eventually we want to build a visitors center and a sculpture garden where we will hold seasonal exhibits of art. Perhaps we can even convince remarkable sculptor, Andy Goldsworthy to participate as he has visited us here and used our stone in several of his installations in the Berkshires....(wouldn't that be something??)
Everyday we are captivated by this stone that we have been privileged to work with. It's amazing that we can take this ancient material - 400 million years old - and be asked to further metamorphose it into a material that will be used to enrich someones environment.