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.
©Verrill FarmThe 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.
Steve, Jennifer, and Joan Verrill
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, auctioned off its herd. But as the traditions of the previous generation passed away, the next generation brought new traditions.
Jennifer Verrill, Steve’s daughter, loves cooking, so she converted a barn left empty by the cows into a commercial kitchen. Baked goods have been a staple of the farm ever since: during Thanksgiving season they turn out thousands of their renowned pies. With the expanding range of produce and the addition of the kitchen, it became necessary for the Verrills to build a permanent farm stand, which went up in 1995.
On September 20, 2008, Steve and his wife Joan were coming home from a wedding when they got a call from an employee about a fire at the farm stand. An exhaust fan in the rafters had caught fire and started a four-alarm blaze. There were no fire hydrants in range, so the fire department had to wait for a water truck to arrive from Hanscom Airforce Base seven miles away, “and by then there wasn’t much to save,” says Verrill.
But work never stopped at the farm. Two days later they were selling produce off of temporary tables and the old wooden wagon. The Verrills moved immediately to build a new permanent farm stand. At first, their architects told them that it would take 16 months to build a new farm stand, but by will and good fortune the current farm stand was completed exactly 365 days after the fire.
commons.wikimedia.org Today Verrill Farm crops around 150 acres of land – although it used to do even more, as when the Verrills had a field by the Hanscom airfield and had to wave down the control tower to let them move their tractors across the tarmac. Their fields are filled with rows of lettuce, spinach, rhubarb, potatoes, and many other crops including their signatures of sweet corn and tomatoes, the latter of which they grow in well over 100 varieties.
Verrill Farm is a rarity in modern farming. Most farms today grow one or two crops, allowing them to have mechanized, large-scale production with industrial machines. Verrill Farm harkens to an earlier time when communities relied on a handful of small local farms for all of their food. But the Verrills have not shied from technological advancement either; they sport a fleet of state-of-the-art machines to seed, weed, water, and till their fields. One machine eliminates weeds by throwing flames onto the ground out of the mouths of propane tanks.
When asked what the future holds for Verrill Farm, Steve Verrill simply answers, “No one knows.” It will, however, eventually pass over into the hands of the next generation, to Jennifer Verrill. And it will undoubtedly remain a rare gem. Walking around the premises, one is struck that a place of work could be so beautiful. Trays of lettuce about to be planted lie arranged in a checkerboard of deep crimson and green; tractors dot an open field beside a pen full of horses; and everywhere the smell of wet soil, of new life, fills the nostrils.
Steve Verrill likes to say that in the spring, when they harvest and plow the fields, they are “clearing the canvas” for the summer. And what more fitting description is there for this great communal effort called Verrill Farm, which changes with the seasons while staying fixed in its spirit? It is a work of art – and like all works of art it calls forth from nature beauty and joy.
Visit verrillfarm.com for the latest information on what’s happening at the farm stand or to buy a copy of their book, A Farm Grows in Concord – Celebrating 100 Years of Verrill Farm; a blend of family, farm, and Concord history along with 80 favorite Verrill Farm kitchen recipes.
