So Block Island

The Original Wind Farmer

Everett Littlefield has been using wind to power his home for decades

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Thirty five years before Block Island had a wind farm, Everett Littlefield constructed his own backyard windmill on Old Town Road. It supplied power to his house and propane delivery business until 1991’s Hurricane Bob tore through the blades and gears. Not to be beat by some wind, he had another one up and running in less than three months. With roots in the farms of Ireland and England, Everett’s family are 16th generation Islanders and when adversity hits, they hit back with hard work and a tough spirit to be prepared for anything.

Everett Russell Littlefield was born just six weeks after the 90-mile-per-hour winds of the Hurricane of 1938 flooded the island, smashed or sunk 86 fishing boats and destroyed nearly every barn. Back then the roads were dirt, the pace of life was slow and the island, geographically and economically, was wide open. His dad was Lester Leroy Littlefield, “Shorty” to friends and family, and he carted goods like coal, ice, lobster pots and the occasional piano to support his wife and three children. Shorty also pumped water from island ponds to refill wells and cisterns, some of which were fed only by rain following the lines of house gutters.

Childhood for Everett was free from the ties of instant everything and the constant pressures of immediacy. He played in the fields and ponds of a sparsely populated small town but worked long hours to help the family business. Young Everett left the island for the Navy and the world, proudly serving his country as an airplane mechanic.


“I got to fly all over, to every country in Europe that had an embassy, most of the Mid-East and a big chunk of Africa,” he said, frequently in a Convair R4Y-5Z. The service gave him a love of aircraft. Backlit by windless sunrises, he flies his scale planes and helicopters from Corn Neck Road, practicing takeoffs and landings between the ocean and salt pond. His time in Naples, Italy gave him Verna, the love of his life and for 54 years they have raised their next two generations while running the family business from their home.

“Since ‘81, together they have made over 750,000 kilowatts,” Everett said of his turbines. By comparison, that new wind farm south of the island will generate 30 million watts. Everett is a living reflection of the island’s past and future, not solely because he’s on the hinge of 78 or that two of his sons continue the family business, but because he still lives the life he always wanted. There might be a few more toys and distractions around the back forty, where he raises pigs, chickens and turkeys amongst his many vegetable gardens, but he still loves the island for what it was. He knows the road’s old names, who used to live where and how fine life was and is in a small town.

Modern politics can rattle him as they’re fueled by division compounded by a lack of respect for the rolled up sleeves common sense which built the country he served. Everett Littlefield, like the windmill, business and farm, has thrived in a changing world with the graces of hard work, family and a place in island history few newcomers might understand. His first book, Block Island Turkey and Toby Roe’s is a tale of childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s when fields were wide, salt ponds teemed with spring mackerel and fall stripers, when Ball jars filled cellars, tight with jellies, tomatoes and beans. Back then, the island largely sustained itself, just like the man with the windmill in his backyard.

block island, everett littlefield, wind energy, energy, windmill, wind, hurricane bob, lester leroy littlefield, convair R4Y-5Z,

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