Paul Willard, seen at his farmstand several summers ago. (Photo by Ellen Harasimowicz)
If you drive by the Willard farmstand on Still River Road, it’s guaranteed to be open. Though the light shuts off at 9 p.m., you still can purchase pots of basil, tomato plants, and jars of honey; you just have to make your own change from a tin cash box and deposit large bills and checks into a locked safe.
“It’s just the honor system,” owner Paul Willard shrugs. One of his customers would bike to work at odd hours, and often stop to buy produce on his way home around 2 a.m. The biker’s peculiar, but regular, shopping habits, “is how the town would test new policemen,” says Willard.
As consumer interest in buying local and sustainable produce grows, area farmstands have seen success these past years. Yet, despite the trendiness, the Willard farmstand is delightfully down-to-earth, and remains a testament to decades of common-sense farming.
‘A townie from the get-go’
I met Paul Willard behind his low-slung farmstand and row of greenhouses as he was hammering stakes for future tomato plants. Paul grew up here, played ball in the fields, fished in the small pond behind the trees, and dubs himself “a townie from the get-go.”
His family has worked this same 17-acre property since 1646. The existing three-story white house was built in 1912 from plans ordered from a Sears and Roebuck catalog. The original farmhouse burned down in 1910 after a group of kids were left alone and one of them knocked over a kerosene lantern. Family legend debates the perpetrator, but the threat of tattling served as useful child blackmail for years to come.
“People are buying local for all the right reasons. They want to help their local farmers. They care, and they want to know where their food is coming from.”
—Paul Willard
Until the end of June, Willard is in the midst of his busiest time of year. His irrigation system needs to be hooked up, the budding plants need to be checked, the ones in the greenhouse need watering, the weeds will soon need controlling, and the crops will need to be treated. We walked among some of the fields, where small sprouts of zucchini, eggplant, and summer squash poked through holes in a black tarp.
Willard’s yellow sweet corn is one of his most popular vegetables. He is currently planting new rows of corn each week to have an ample, fresh supply all summer long. “People say the corn here is excellent,” he says. “They drive miles out of their way for our corn. I don’t know why, but it’s a nice compliment.”
Bittersweet, goldenrod, chestnuts
Willard’s father started the farmstand while Willard was away at college. He collected buckets of bittersweet, golden rod, and chestnuts to sell to tourists by the roadside. After collecting $60 in a weekend, “a pile of money back then,” recalls Willard, they began selling vegetables, and the stand took off.
From Labor Day to October, heaps of pumpkins surround the stand. He credits his loyal customers for sustaining a small farmstand because, he says, “Nowadays everybody has a pile of pumpkins, even gas stations. It’s a huge business.” Don’t expect to go traipsing through his fields to find your own, though. Willard is not a fan of the trendy U-Pick. “I prefer to put out a nice pumpkin, polish it, and even strap it into the front seat of your car if you want,” he says.
Paul Willard seems as much a part of the land as the mounds of dirt and the green buds of new pepper plants. He wears scuffed work boots; a worn NRA hat shades his suntanned face; and his only fixture of modernity is the small beeper he wears on his belt for his duties as animal control officer.
“The only people who have this number are my assistant, the cops, and my family so they can call me in to supper,” he says, patting the small hip clip. Willard has been the town dogcatcher for almost 20 years. “I never work for anything other than a handshake,” he says. “No contracts, no expense accounts, nothing. But I went to the Board of Selectmen for a raise one year, and I was made animal control officer.”
‘The old-timers’ rule’
When it comes to problem pets, Willard trusts in what he calls “the old-timers’ rule” that problems come in groups of three. “Sometimes I’ll be at it every day, four hours a day doing animal control; then sometimes a week goes by and nothing happens.” Armed with a gun, he is often called to deal with sick raccoons, possums, and woodchucks, and their less fortunate roadkill brethren.
According to Willard, when a motorist strikes a deer, “State law says that the guy who hits it gets first claim. Of course, they have to clear it with Fish and Game, but then they get it.” If the unfortunate motorist does not want to stock the freezer with venison, Willard has a list at the ready and calls people who might be interested. Sometimes a deer’s injuries will be such that it can’t be eaten, and he will dispose of it by taking it to the highway department to be buried.
Paul Willard, in his role as dog officer, addresses Town Meeting in April.
(Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
He follows rabies protocol for both dogs and cats but scoffs at those who have proposed putting rabies tags on cats. “Can you imagine trying to put a collar on a cat?” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “Sometimes you just need to use common sense.” As if on cue, a black-and-white spotted feline daintily picked her way around a fence post and disappeared under the shade of a large maple.
When dogs get loose, he picks them up and waits for the phone to ring. He says there are some “proverbial problem dogs” who get out and kill chickens, and then there are the bike chasers. He acknowledges, “Most dogs have the good sense to chase those from out of town, especially in the nice shiny bright biking uniforms … I sort of want to give those dogs a medal.”
‘No money, but we never lacked’
An influx of spandex-clad bikers is not the only change Willard notices about the town. “Back in the day, people’s goal was to stick around where you can find a job,” he recalls. He thinks new residents of the town are drawn to the public education and the potential to make money from real estate. “We have ridiculously high taxes,” he says. “But taxes are always good to bitch about.”
When Willard was young, he continues, “There was no money here, but we never lacked. Everyone was in the same boat.” He says there were no laws governing kids and their pay. He would go pick potatoes at Carlson’s farm and gather dropped apples at Westward Orchard. Then he’d spend his afternoon fishing.
Willard was a member of the largest graduating class at Bromfield until that time—26 students. He remains cavalier about formalized education. “School was what it was, but I probably would have been happy without it.” He recalls a simple chalkboard and few materials in the old Bromfield building. “Apparently I was a good student but an underachiever,” he says. “But I am not a big fan of public education because everyone gets put into the same mold. Schools can be glorified babysitting.” He prefers the childhood of his day: “We were set loose and would go out and play until chores or supper. Nobody worried.”
As farms are disappearing, Willard is fortunate to have found what he calls “niche farming.” A renewed interest in local farms and sustainable produce has also kept him afloat. “People are buying local for all the right reasons,” he says. “They want to help their local farmer. They care, and they want to know where their food is coming from.”
Of pest-control and GMOs
Willard Farm is an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) farm, meaning pest control is handled through a series of practices with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment. “We only use chemicals as needed,” says Willard, resulting in a smaller carbon footprint than larger-scale organic farms. Willard says when it comes to organic farming, the notion is corrupted by economics, and he characterizes the government definition of organic farm as “typical bureaucracy.” IPM farms use pesticides as a last resort and rely mostly on common-sense practices, he asserts.
Fear of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, is another recent consumer-driven food trend. While GMOs have been given a lot of flak, Willard says that if you buy anything with corn, chances are it has been genetically modified. “I’ve never been quite clear on the controversy of modifying a plant in a lab. Isn’t that what Father Mendel did? No one has been able to explain this to me.” None of Willard’s seeds are modified; he orders them from a catalog in January and begins potting and growing them in the greenhouse in March.
A coffee-light and jelly stick
kind of guy
Cars pulled in and out of the dirt parking lot, and customers carried off tomato plants for their gardens and pots of basil for their window sills. Though he grows bushels of vegetables each year, Willard is partial to a no-fuss diet of meat and potatoes. “I’m a coffee-light and jelly stick kind of guy,” he says with a shrug. “As you get older, eating is just something you do to keep going.”
The farmstand is currently selling asparagus, basil, tomato plants, and honey; eggs, when available, are in the fridge. The farmstand is always open; just don’t expect to pay with a credit card.
