Fall farms

by Michael J. DeCicco

The fall harvest season is in full bloom, and South Coast farms big and small are announcing nothing but good news.

Escobar Highland Farm

Business at Escobar Highland Farm and Corn Maze, at 255 Middle Road in Portsmouth, is going strong. The farm opened in 1938, and Louis Escobar, 82, the son of the original owner, is still in charge. The farm is still selling hundreds of pumpkins from its pumpkin patch at this time of year as well as all of the milk from the 100-200 cows the Escobar family milks once a day.

But the farm’s main attraction, the eight-acre Corn Maze, will also be the major draw this season, said farm manager Stewart McNaught, with no dip in attendance.

The maze sees an average of 1,000 visitors per year, he said. The season will again be highlighted by its annual Halloween Party on October 31 (rain date November 1). Wear a costume and receive $1 off admission for an event that will include scarecrows, a hay play area, pumpkin decorating, and possibly hay rides. Don’t miss visiting the nearby concession stand that sells popcorn, candy, soda, water, animal crackers, raisins, and butterscotch-flavored lollipops in the shape of an ear of corn.

The maze, which was designed by Brett Herbst of The MAiZE organization, this year celebrates the farmer, McNaught said. The farm’s traditional hayrides are a question mark this year because of COVID shutdown regulations, he added. But he is confident the farm’s cow train will be ready for young riders of all ages, he said, and the games and picnic tables will be up and ready.

“Part of an increasingly popular ‘agri-tainment’ trend, it will be joined this year by more than 250 affiliated MAiZE sites across the United States, Canada, and Europe,” McNaught added proudly.

The maze will remain open until November 8. Times and admission prices are on the website, escobarfarm.com. Also visit Lou’s Pumpkin Patch, open every fall. Get your Jack ‘O Lanterns and your Pie Pumpkins too!

A.D. Makepeace

The only difference this year for South Coast’s largest fall harvest producer, the Wareham cranberry grower A.D. Makepeace, is that the company is not doing any of the special events it usually hosts at this time of year. “It’s not because of COVID,” Linda Burke, vice-president of Marketing and Communications, said, “but because of the threat of EEE.”

But the harvest season itself has not been changed, she said, and it’s going strong. Makepeace cranberries are harvested from around the middle of September to the first or second week of November every year. That’s when the company’s 2,000 acres of bogs will produce a yearly average of 400,000 barrels of cranberries that are then shipped to Ocean Spray to make the juices and other cranberry products the fruit is known for.

How much exactly Makepeace will produce this year in total would be just a guess at this point in time, Burke said. “You never know what conditions will be like.”

But the company, she said, was lucky for being dubbed an essential operation under the March shutdowns. That’s when the fruit is “settling” and needs to be protected from frost with a sprayed blanket of ice.

Meanwhile, the company’s weekly Southcoast Health Farmers’ Markets, which start every year in July, are continuing at its 35 Rosebrook Place property, every Thursday from 3 to 6:30 p.m., featuring farm produce vendors, crafters, and sellers of homemade foods.

“This year hasn’t slowed us given that our bogs are so spread out and our crews work independently,” Burke said. “The impact has not been great. I don’t think the pandemic will slow us down. It depends on how the season plays out. But this year our cranberry production has actually increased.”

Almedia’s Vegetable Patch

The fall season for generations-old Almedia’s Vegetable Patch, at 110 GAR Highway in Swansea, is in good shape as well. At press time, the 60-acre family had nine acres of pumpkins almost ready to be harvested and 24 acres of corn remaining to be picked.

Meanwhile, what has been picked by the Almedia family and crew are on full display at the stand fronting the property, featuring not only family-grown corn but also asparagus, squash, zucchini, cabbage, tomatoes, beets, peas, green beans, and kale, as well as fresh fruit and eggs from local and Boston markets.

John Almedia IV, of the fourth generation to run the farm, said he awakens at 1 a.m. on the days he travels to the Boston Market to buy fresh the other fruits and vegetables the stand features. “Early in the morning, the produce hasn’t been sitting in the warehouse. They are fresh as can be. We buy for quality. I want the best. I’m not looking for cheap or for deals. I’m looking for quality. It’s our family philosophy.”

The stand was established in 1985. Nearby sits a concession stand trailer that opened for the first time this year, where the family sells all-beef hot dogs, french fries, and smoothies made from only the fresh fruit Almeida buys in Boston and honey from a local farm.

John IV said his great grandfather, John Senior, started the farm at that location in 1916. By the time his grandfather took over, the family had amassed a total or 171 acres of farmland. Around the 1970s, the family stopped selling its produce to wholesale dealers, including delivering to the Fanueil Hall marketplace in Boston, and now it grows just what it sells at its Swansea stand. “We decided retail was the better way to go,” he said.

In October, John IV’s mother Irene said, the farm’s pumpkin crop will become one of the main features of the farm stand, decorated with hay bales and gourds made from the farm’s own crop. In late October, she said, the stand will close. But it will reopen in time to sell fresh-cut trees from Canada for the Christmas season.

“We offer an old-school family atmosphere,” she added. “So many customers, they’re like family. We’ve seen several generations of the same customers. We’re an old-fashioned small business. We have a passion for what we do here.”

Orr’s Farm

The prime destination in Westport for fresh fall harvest produce is Orr’s Farm, at 187 Adamsville Road, a 25 acre farm run by Andrew Orr since 2007.

Andrew bought the Westport farm he had been working on for three years when he was fresh out of high school, Andrew’s father and co-manager, Michael Orr, noted. Farmer Jim Wood was about to retire and sell his 13-acre, 107-year-old farm to the Westport Land Conservation organization. Instead, the younger Orr worked out a deal with Wood to buy it himself (with conservation easements in place to keep the land agricultural).

“I asked Jim [Wood] if Andrew, being just 17-years-old at the time, was the man for the job,” Michael Orr said. “Jim said, ‘If I had to bet on any of the people who’ve ever worked with me, I’d bet on him.’”

Wood would have won that bet. The farm now boasts owning the Adamsville Road land and two fields on Main Road, totalling 14 acres, where it grows most of everything it sells. Its farm stand features not only vegetables and fruits but herbs, cut flowers, corn stalks, straw, mums, strawberries, chestnuts, soybeans, and Indian corn.

Right now they are selling their own sweet corn, tomatoes, pumpkins, winter squashes, green beans and string beans, and they’re selling carrots and cucumbers locally grown elsewhere.

He said it has been a tough year but the farm has survived it well. “We did okay with COVID,” Michael Orr said, “It worked out for us because under these conditions people want to get outside to buy fresh produce.”