Photo by Ken Williams / Monitor staff

Bill Bartlett, whose foot problems make walking painful, uses his Segway to get around the blueberry fields at his farm in Newport.Purchase photo reprints at PhotoExtra »

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For 21 years, Bill Bartlett has balanced work on his family's blueberry farm in Newport with his career as a bovine podiatrist. Three years ago, he began having problems with his own feet, developing heel spurs that made walking for long periodspainful.

Frustrated, Bartlett and his wife, Heidi, decided to put the farm, with its five acres of blueberries and a panoramic view of Mount Sunapee, up for sale. Bartlett's friend, Bud Berry, urged him to try out his Segway HT, the New Hampshire-made human transporter. In June, he let him borrow it for a test drive. Bartlett hasn't given it back yet.

"It's made our blueberry operation fun," he said.

The Bartletts are part of a growing group of Segway users who are taking the machine off the city streets and into the farming landscape. For the Bartletts, the Segway saved the farm - at least for now. They took the property off the market last fall. Bartlett said the convenience of the Segway will keep it off for a while longer.

The Segway has primarily been sold for city use since it came out in 2002. Klee Kleber, vice president of marketing at the Bedford headquarters, said creating an off-road version and broadening the market has always been part of the plan. This spring, the company introduced the Segway XT with bigger, lower-pressure tires and stronger batteries that can handle mud, snow, sand and bumpy terrain while still giving the driver a soft ride.

Now people are looking to use the machines as transportation to camping sites. Police officers and park rangers are using them to patrol wooded areas. And they are proving useful on farms large and small.

The Segway that Bartlett uses is the original HT version, but it handles his farm pretty well.

Demonstrating, he stood on the gyroscope-driven platform, which is controlled by the driver's balance, zipped across the driveway onto the grass and ran figure-eights between bushes.

"This thing goes up and down,"he said, rolling over ridges in the grass. "You can do anything with it."

Berry, who now rents the machines, got interested in the Segway as a means of mobility for his wife, who has multiple sclerosis. He said Bartlett never would have tried it if they weren't good friends.

"I only did it to appease him,"Bartlett said. "I thought it was a yippy thing."

Bartlett said he is an active guy and, despite the pain in his feet, was reluctant to slow down. But the amount of walking he had to do when the farm was open for picking was starting to wear on him.

In order to get the optimal yield out of the bushes, Bartlett leads pickers to a full bush of blueberries in the field and asks them to pick it clean before moving onto the next bush. On busy days, he covers a lot of ground making trips to the field and back to the house. Each row of bushes is 300 feet long.

"That's over a tenth of a mile (there and back) - one customer,"he said. "After you pound on your feet all day, it really gets sore."

With the Segway, he can lead customers to the bushes at their pace and then speed back at about 12 mph to the house. Bartlett figures he has logged about 160 hours on the machine, which he has modified slightly by adding a piece of pipe to the shaft to hold pointed dowels he uses to hang bird netting over the bushes. Berry also added a plastic ring to hold his wife's cane.

The Segway is virtually noiseless and costs about 75 cents in electric energy a day to recharge the batteries.

"Ain't this slick?" Bartlett says, turning 180 degrees in motion to roll backward as he leads visitors to bushes behind the house.

Bartlett said the Segway may even boost business. While they walk, he can tell the customers about the farm, talk about the growing season and explain the picking rules. That interaction with the customer is key for niche farmers like him, he said. (next page »)