The Early Years
Joseph “Mack” Bouchard (father of Kingston Turf Farms owner, Brian Bouchard) came to Rhode Island in 1938 and began working for a man named Arthur Peckham. Mr. Peckham was the first person in the United States to plant grass seed, he propagated it, raised and sold it. At the time, bentgrass was a native grass in Rhode Island. He also purchased a seed cleaning machine to prepare the seed for sale. The seed required large amounts of land to raise the amount of seed he desired, so he sent an employee to the Pacific Northwest to find some land, that employee never returned, he set up his own seed company out west. “Mack” decided he needed to do something different as the seed farm wasn’t going to continue, and start growing potatoes, he began farming them around 1940. Brian worked on the potato farm with his father and family members, learning the ways of farming and land preparation. As he grew older, he too felt the need to do something different and began Kingston Turf Farms in 1967, on the family farm, growing sod to sell to retail and wholesale customers and offered them a delivery service. He was hands-on, working to prep the land, harvesting the sod by hand, rolling it up, stacking it and loading it on the trucks by hand. He was also hands-on delivering and installing the sod he grew, he drove the trucks and worked hand in hand with his employees to lay out the lush green turf.
