Slippery Rock Gazette

SRG Visits a Family-Owned Schist Quarry in Massachusetts

Peter Marcucci

Photos by Peter Marcucci

Tucked in the Berkshire Mountains of northern Massachusetts lies the town of Shelburne Falls. This gem along the highway is the quintessential New England town abundant with shops, galleries and local color. Adding to its picture-perfect charm is the extensive use of local stone called schist. 

Jerry Pratt sizes up schist for an upcoming job. Pratt says that he had no idea what was to come when he first discovered the flat schist stones on their woodlot. The area is known for its vast deposits of both soft and hard schist. Ashfield schist happens to be the harder variety.

Above: Ashfield Stone’s 8,500 square foot shop is built on ten acres, and updated six years ago when the Pratts needed more production space. Heat for the building is from an outdoor, wood-burning furnace and fed with local wood, most likely logged by Jerry Pratt.

Above: Brandon Osman is one of four shop men, shown here sizing up a slab fresh off the company’s eight-head polisher. Different levels of abrasive honing result in lighter or darker finishes.

Above: Hand splitting the old school way with a hammer with chisel is actually commonplace at Ashfield Stone. The skill it takes to split by chisel is considerable.

Above: One of two Ashfield Stone gantry saws. The big saws can cut up to 50 inches deep and up to 14 feet long.

Above: From, left, Ashfield Quarry Schist samples include Galaxy, Quicksilver, and Crowsfoot and Pond Ice (far right), rare schist variations found in the quarry.

Above: This polished schist sculpture is sitting on honed Galaxy schist planks.

Above: According to Jerry Pratt, their quarry was once the floor of an old ocean basin that’s still being pushed inland and being buckled. Bed lines run at about a 15-degree angle. Four full-time quarriers regularly tend to production, and on the day of this photo, they were splitting schist for patio and wall construction shop, and blocks for the shop.

Above: This vanity top fabricated in the Ashfield Stone shop shows off the distinctive grain found in schist, and is designed for a vessel sink

Above: Crowsfoot is a variegated schist designated by the NSI as one of this continent’s rare, exotic stones. This 600 million year-old stone originally flowed out of ancient volcanos.

This story is about the vast reserves of this stone, its history and the many lives it has shaped. As told by Jerry and Johanna Pratt, co-owners of Ashfield Stone, it all began with the couple’s desire to go back to the land and live a wholesome life of farming. What they eventually got, however, was more than they ever thought possible.  

“I graduated from the University of Massachusetts in the early 1970s with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts,” recalls Johanna. “After that, my first job was milking cows for a local farmer here in Ashfield. His name was Ted Howes, and his family had been there for generations, just like every other family in the area. He was a wonderful man and a local historian, and I’d listen intently to his stories. I then met Jerry. 

“Jerry had grown up around here and had done a lot of masonry work as a contractor. Both of us wanted to go back to the land and use our own materials as much as we could, as well as do some form of farming. The land we bought was a woodlot that had a dilapidated camp on it. We bought it in 1984 from a couple that hadn’t used it in 16 years, however, the porcupines had. There was something like six dump truck loads of porcupine manure that had come out of it. They had chewed everything to pieces, but we managed to keep the shell and began planning what to do. Soon after, with the help of Ted Howes helping Jerry log our own spruce and hemlock, and a friend’s portable saw mill, we started ripping our lumber.” 

Don’t Take Their Schist for Granite  

In the process of logging, Jerry and Johanna often wound up unearthing stone. They didn’t know what type it was, but Jerry had recognized it from the foundation work he had done, continued Johanna. “Jerry’s father was a mason and told Jerry that this stone had been used for over 300 years for everything we now use cement for. In those days the local Yankees said, ‘Flat rock! I know what we can do with flat rock,’ and would go out and split it in layers for construction, mostly for door steps, foundation basing, well covers and floors. So it was intriguing to us that we had found one more natural material we could use for our purposes.” 

By the late 1980s, Johanna had traded milking cows for raising them, while Jerry began finding commercial uses for the buried treasure. They were also gifted with their daughter, Mary May. 

 “We were living in that old cabin and just building around ourselves,” continued Johanna. “I was now teaching school and Jerry was specializing in jacking-up and shoring-up the old cape style homes in the area. At some point while working, Jerry saw a hollow in the woods with a great big slab of stone with drill marks and a hand-hewn beam propping it up.” 

For Jerry, this big slab was a “Eureka Moment,” thinking that somewhere close by was a ledge, and when he had some spare time would return to scrape around it and unearth smaller pieces of flat rock. As fate would have it, while working a carpentry job in the town of Old Deerfield, Jerry used these flat stones for steps, he explains. “When I was working on that house, the customer asked if I knew where there was any flagstone. I said that the land we just bought in Ashfield had some on it, and maybe I could get some there. They needed a walkway and patio, and I dug out the stone and returned and laid it out. Then other people around the neighborhood started asking for it.”

At this point, Johanna was skeptical about the value of their find; that is, until a local mason stopped by, she recalled. “A local landscaper mason came by and said, ‘You’ve got really nice stone. It’s much harder than the stone south of you. Can I buy some from you?’ So he filled his pickup truck and handed me a $20 bill. I then thought, hmm, maybe we can do this!”

The Beginning Years– Blood, Sweat, Sore Muscles and Tears

Demand for the stone continued to increase, and they applied for a permit to open their quarry commercially. According to Johanna, the town awarded the permit saying, “If they’re dumb enough to dig rocks in their backyard, let ‘em have at it!” So Jerry and a helper had at it, working a ledge that yielded material for landscaping. An old dump truck was used to make the deliveries. 

 “In the beginning we had to wander around a bit to find the formations, how it was laying in the hill and how to lift it without smashing it all to heck,” continued Jerry. “When we were quarrying for landscape, that was easy, but when we went into dimensional stone, that was difficult and we learned the hard way. We did try using explosives or drilling holes and banging it, but there was a whole new set of rules to learn as far as the mechanics, the engineering, and the techniques and terms. We didn’t know what any of that stuff was, and we were ‘babes in the woods’ each time we started the next plateau. So with each plateau we had to broaden our horizons by going from chisels, to splitting mauls, to light air tools, to hydraulic hammers hung from a backhoe, then figure a way to lift it without damaging it. The rest is ‘schistory.’”

Quarrying and Processing Until the Cows Come Home

Ashfield Stone’s 8,500-square- foot shop is built on their 10-acre lot, and houses a four-foot gantry saw, a six-foot gantry saw, a 10-foot span bridge saw, a large eight-head surface grinder/polisher and a small strip saw. To facilitate lifting, a three-axis overhead crane services the entire inside, while a skip loader and Bobcat keep things moving outside. A combination commercial/home-built water purification system keeps the local water clean. Quarry assets include three excavators, a skid steer, forklift, hydraulic hammer, guillotine and all the drills and tooling to get it done.  

“Getting it done every day” is performed by 10 full-time employees. All are hard workers dedicated to the company, and all have a natural affinity for stone, said Jerry proudly. 

In years before they built their shop, Jerry and Johanna would send the big jobs to Barre, Vermont for cutting. Barre is the location of the Rock of Ages Quarry, operating since 1880. But the couple wanted their own equipment, explained Johanna. “What we learned from sending jobs to Barre is that we wanted to control and manage our work ourselves. So we got our first mortgage and went up to Barre and had a builder make us two bridge saws. They were then installed in our first shop at the quarry.”

”We  worked in that shop year-round for 25 years using a woodstove for heat, but outgrew it six years ago because the demand was increasing. It was too small and the equipment too old. It was like having an old car that you were fixing all the time, and we decided to modernize and build a bigger shop.” 

“What I learned in Barre is that I wanted the stone to come in one side and the finished product to go out the other side,” continued Jerry. “Our saws can cut 50 inches deep and as long as 14 feet long, if we have a block long enough. In our quarry, however, we can split out blocks that are 20 feet by 14 feet for a single stone patio. So we do get huge slabs out of there and do feather and wedge them.” 

The Ashfield quarry property is 32 acres total with five acres of open ledge. Other than the consistent, alternating variegation throughout the blocks, colors are consistent throughout the quarry, said Johanna. 

Jerry: “Yeah, it’s really cool. We didn’t know in the beginning that we would be finding schist that was truly banded, meaning that the lines all run straight up and down and dark, light, dark, light. The colors/patterns might be three inches apart, they might be four inches apart, but as far as from one side of the quarry to the other, the colors are consistent.” 

Ashfield Quarry currently offers Galaxy and Quicksilver schist. Applications include (but are not limited to) flooring, countertops, landscaping, furniture, carved sinks and fireplaces, said Johanna, adding, “What’s wonderful about our stone is that you can walk up a huge, beautiful flag walkway of cleft splitface, up cleft steps into a foyer with our sawn, satin floor planking, to an ashlar fireplace surround and on to a polished kitchen. This material will do it all!” 

Johanna also explained that the market for their products is unique. “We’re in a very interesting little niche for ourselves for dimension work in interior applications. You have slate and soapstone on one end of the spectrum, and granite and marble on the other. The slates and soapstones do hone beautifully, but aren’t going to take a reflective polish. Our schist takes a very understated polish that appeals to people who want the natural look of slate or soapstone, but don’t want the high glamour-polish look of granite or marble. When schist is in a honed form, it has similar aesthetics to soapstone, but it’s quite a bit harder, and doesn’t scratch or absorb as much.”

“Our schist does take a reflective polish, but the polish isn’t the first thing that you see when you look at it. It’s understated, and that appeals to people. Being a domestic stone also appeals to people. So I don’t sell the stone, the stone sells itself. Its natural appeal is either right for people or it’s wrong, and when the phone rings it could be for a new home construction, or home owner for a renovation, or a fabricator, architect or construction company who has specified our stone.” 

Ashfield Stone does exhibit at the Architecture Expo Boston show and occasionally advertises on radio and in magazines, but much of the interest for their products is by word-of-mouth. Upcoming work includes the flooring for the New York Public Library, the flooring for the new science building at Williams College, located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as well as an unnamed large-scale hardscaping project. 

Market radius normally extends as far as 500 miles in most directions, but the company does go farther when needed, said Johanna. “Our schist went into building the owner’s box of the Dallas Cowboys at the Dallas, Texas Stadium, which is really cool. It was also used at the Atlanta Braves clubhouse bar tops in Atlanta, Georgia. We don’t normally do a lot of cross-country shipping and supply mostly the northeast, but we’ve shipped as far as the state of Washington.” 

Finely Tuned and Ready for the Future

“It was my dream getting to this point, and we’ve gone out on a limb to get here,” continued Jerry. “But it’s really nice to know when I get up every day that our hard work has brought success. I love these hills, I grew up here, and I know them like the back of my hand. On any one of these hills, I can tell you where the stone is and how it runs, and to think that we’ve taken this stone to a national market — the reward is way better than monetary. We like to think we are part of the ongoing 400 million year-old metamorphosis of this stone.

Presented over a large surface like an island and polished, the flows and crystaline patterns in Crowsfoot are some of the most beautiful seen in natural stone.

Above: This fountain features fleuri cut Quicksilver schist flags, and rough, chisel cut stacked schist.

Above: Schist has been used for building in new England since colonial times, so it is quite fitting to be used in this small Revolutionary War memorial plaza.

“However, we aren’t getting any younger, and we’ve got to start thinking about the future. — I mean, we’ve done all these amazing things, you know! It was so much fun and so wild, and I’m a wild man! I love this business, and I still learn something every day. I continue to mow our 52 acres of hay fields and we put it up in our own hay barn, and on a daily basis feed and water the cows and make sure they are healthy and happy. I’m raised New England, and for me it’s mandatory to keep every field open that I possibly can for my entire life. That’s from the lessons I learned. You burn wood and build your buildings with it, and this keeps your woods cared for. 

 “We cleared the land, built our house and barn, built the quarry shop and figured out how to tool it. Then we got the stone to the marketplace and figured out how the monetary end works. The whole thing was built from the wild. Somehow we made it, but we still have a lot of rounding out to do. My nephew, Bryce, will be instrumental in taking over production, and Mary and Drew (daughter and son-in-law) will eventually come along and either hire management or be the management. We talk about selling it, but if the kids want it and keep it going, it would be nice. I believe that the footprint of this company will last 100 years or longer. We’ve got the product and this facility, and the market is working out.” 

Johanna: “We are farmers and our hearts are in the land, and it’s a privilege to be a steward of that land. We raise grass-fed beef cows, and I’d love it if they’d stay in their fences! There are other things I’d like to develop, such as using our stone dust in farming to put the minerals back in the soil. The farmers here have been turning over the same two feet of soil for the last 200 years. The magnesium, the sulfur, the phosphorus which makes the soil very rich is depleted. The whole concept of adding minerals from stone is big in Europe, and it’s just beginning here. We had our stone dust analyzed, and it has a lot of value for re-mineralization. From the beginning, our mission statement has been to use everything, and this is something I’d like to do.” 

In closing, every day Jerry and Johanna, along with their like-minded employees, are carving out a tradition of beautiful, crafted stone through hard work and dedication.

They are thankful that days of one man holding a chisel and the other man striking it with a sledge and then prying it with an old car leaf spring are gone.

What isn’t gone, thankfully, is the work ethic, the respect for the earth and the resourcefulness that got the Pratts from the beginning to the present day.

It is these values and the others within this story that has truly made and kept America and our industry great. It has been an honor and privilege for the Slippery Rock Gazette to tell their story.   

For more information about Ashfield Stone or the history of schist as a building stone go to www.ashfieldstone.com.