Scouts help transform Warrior Ranch in Calverton

About 140 Boy Scouts from Suffolk County volunteered last week to help clean up a portion of the Warrior Ranch in Calverton.

The youngsters picked up sticks and twigs leftover from invasive brush on 3.5 acres of the 6-acre property. Their work prepares the land to be graded for a future outdoor arena, round pen and obstacle course for the horses. The Scouts also pulled nails from fence posts and painted an outside cellar door red, all to ready the Warrior Ranch to be open for spring and summer horse therapy sessions for military veterans and first responders. 

“Our vets are probably our most important national treasure,” Jimmy Elder, Scout Master of Troop 204 in Miller Place, said in a written statement. “We’re showing our scouts that today is all about our community.”

Eileen Shanahan, president of the Warrior Ranch Foundation, was grateful for the Scouts’ efforts.

“Not only did our future leaders take on the laborious tasks, they did it with enthusiasm,” Shanahan said in the statement. “This is a tremendous help in our spring cleanup.”