Grace Faddoul, Tim Faddoul, Jen Verrill, Joan Verrill, Steve Verrill, and Chloe Faddoul
100 YEARS
of Farming & Family
I
at Verrill Farm BY SAM COPELAND
If, on a summer day, you drive down Sudbury Road toward Nine Acre Corner, then, having left the shade of the woods and passed by a line of sunlit fields, you will see a squat brown building standing amidst the rows of crops. This is the farm stand of Verrill Farm. This local family business has gone through many shapes and sizes over the course of its 100-year history, surviving economic changes and even a devastating fire, but it has always carried on in its mission to “nourish the body and soul of our customers by providing healthful food of superb flavor in surroundings of beauty.” The cars of eager customers pack the parking lot of Verrill Farm, just as local foods pack its shelves. Perched on the roof of the farm stand is a weathervane in the shape of a minuteman who, like the statue at the Old North Bridge, stands proudly beside his plow in a reminder that it was, as Emerson said, the “embattled farmer” who first made Concord a historic place. 22
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The man who built that weathervane is Steve Verrill, who has been running Verrill Farm since 1957. A born-and-raised Concord native, Verrill has lived in the area of Nine Acre Corner for nearly his whole life. Along with his work at the farm, he has been a lifelong advocate for farms and small businesses in the area. He was instrumental in the creation of Massachusetts’ Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program, which protects the state’s farmland from being developed into condominiums and office parks. Verrill has also been involved with local government, serving on many of the town’s committees. This past year he teamed with the organization Concord Together to help the town’s small businesses weather the COVID-19 crisis. But for all his public work, the family business, which he inherited from his father, has remained Verrill’s central project. Steve Verrill fondly remembers his father’s dairy farm. The Dairy, as it was called, was
founded in 1918, and delivered milk from its own cows across town, eventually setting up a shop in Concord center where there now sits a Dunkin’ Donuts. Growing up on the farm, Verrill milked his first cow when he was five years old and knew by eight that he wanted to become a farmer himself. Years later, in 1957, he returned to Concord after graduating from Cornell and took over his father’s business. The Dairy gradually grew until they had over 150 cows. An associate recommended that they sell strawberries, their first crop, which they did out of a wooden wagon. That cart can still be seen by the side of the road behind the farm stand that eventually replaced it. Over the years Verrill Farm grew more and more produce as dairy farming became a tougher and tougher business. “When I started there were probably 3000 dairy farmers in Massachusetts,” Verrill recalls; today there are barely more than 100. In 1990 Verrill Farm, the last of Concord’s dairy farms,
