Today marks fifty years since he opened his farm to passersby in search of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables. He purchased the land with his GI bill after returning home from war. He built a house and a barn with his brother's help and married his high school sweetheart. The money he saved while on active duty was used to purchase very used equipment, like a tractor and a combine, which he had to rebuild from the ground up. It took them a year to build the house and another year for the barn. Sometimes a truck with a half dozen farmers would pull up with their tools and join in, something seen often in farm country. Neighbors helping neighbors just because they could.
His first crop was corn and soy, divided into four-acre plots and two long rows of apple trees, sixty trees, if he remembered correctly. In the far back acres, ten in all, he planted Christmas trees that someday, years from then, he'd sell to city folk wanting the whole experience of trudging through snow, wielding axes to hopefully chop down the perfect tree. Most usually, they just picked one out in a fenced-in area close to the road, where trees of all shapes and sizes were ready to be tied to the roofs of cars.
The years passed, and more crops were planted, like pumpkins big and small and everywhere in between. Their eldest boy was tasked with keeping the patch weed-free and putting prices on everything they would sell a couple of weeks before Halloween. The apple trees bore fruit, which their daughter and a few friends picked, bushel after bushel, and loaded onto a trailer to take to the barn, where they were sorted, with the bad ones. Mom would make apple butter and applesauce, preserved in mason jars with fancy ribbons attached for looks. The good apples were counted and put in either a bushel or half-bushel basket, with a free sample for anyone who asked. They even had a press that squeezed apples to make apple cider, which was always a big seller.
Now, in their fifty-fifth year, his sweet wife and he sit on the front porch, watching the cars and trucks pull in or park beside the road, kids running to the pumpkin patch where his grandkids wore Halloween costumes, to the joy of the kids with their eyes on a free apple. Their son's wife ran the stand filled with mom's pies and breads, along with apple butter and apple sauce, and, of course, jugs of apple cider. For them, this place was home and always has been. They watched their children frolic in the corn rows and climb the apple trees when children could be children among the acres. Soon people will come to get the perfect tree and mom's gingerbread cookies. They will warm up by the fire in barrels scattered around, with the smell of pine filling the air. One day he and his wife will retire, leaving everything up to their kids and grandkids to oversee. But until then, Mom came up with the idea of offering hot chocolate free of charge. They set up a table next to the pumpkin patch, greeting their customers with a sweet hot cup of chocolate to warm them up. Hundreds of people came to the farm during autumn and winter; some they knew who came every year, while others brought their grandkids for the first time. The farm eventually closed its doors when it could no longer compete with the big stores that could offer a wide variety of fruits and vegetables at discounted prices. Today, the farm is but a shadow of what it once was: empty bushel baskets worn through time, rusted farm equipment, and fields now fallow parcels of land. They still live in the house they built. Not really caring if it sells. A for-sale sign hangs from a tree limb, swaying in an autumn breeze, as cars rush past, and parents point and tell their kid, " That was the place we told you about when we were your age. "
The years passed, and more crops were planted, like pumpkins big and small and everywhere in between. Their eldest boy was tasked with keeping the patch weed-free and putting prices on everything they would sell a couple of weeks before Halloween. The apple trees bore fruit, which their daughter and a few friends picked, bushel after bushel, and loaded onto a trailer to take to the barn, where they were sorted, with the bad ones. Mom would make apple butter and applesauce, preserved in mason jars with fancy ribbons attached for looks. The good apples were counted and put in either a bushel or half-bushel basket, with a free sample for anyone who asked. They even had a press that squeezed apples to make apple cider, which was always a big seller.
Now, in their fifty-fifth year, his sweet wife and he sit on the front porch, watching the cars and trucks pull in or park beside the road, kids running to the pumpkin patch where his grandkids wore Halloween costumes, to the joy of the kids with their eyes on a free apple. Their son's wife ran the stand filled with mom's pies and breads, along with apple butter and apple sauce, and, of course, jugs of apple cider. For them, this place was home and always has been. They watched their children frolic in the corn rows and climb the apple trees when children could be children among the acres. Soon people will come to get the perfect tree and mom's gingerbread cookies. They will warm up by the fire in barrels scattered around, with the smell of pine filling the air. One day he and his wife will retire, leaving everything up to their kids and grandkids to oversee. But until then, Mom came up with the idea of offering hot chocolate free of charge. They set up a table next to the pumpkin patch, greeting their customers with a sweet hot cup of chocolate to warm them up. Hundreds of people came to the farm during autumn and winter; some they knew who came every year, while others brought their grandkids for the first time. The farm eventually closed its doors when it could no longer compete with the big stores that could offer a wide variety of fruits and vegetables at discounted prices. Today, the farm is but a shadow of what it once was: empty bushel baskets worn through time, rusted farm equipment, and fields now fallow parcels of land. They still live in the house they built. Not really caring if it sells. A for-sale sign hangs from a tree limb, swaying in an autumn breeze, as cars rush past, and parents point and tell their kid, " That was the place we told you about when we were your age. "
Mike 2026
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