Down on the farm; Tradition with a twist.

Byline: Margaret LeRoux

The following correction was published in the Fall issue of Worcester Living on August 26, 2011:

In the summer issue, we incorrectly identified members of the Wheeler family in photos accompanying the story about family farms. The Wheeler operate Indian Head Farm in Berlin. In the photo are, from left, Richard, James, Tim, Joanne and Bill Wheeler.

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To run a small farm in Worcester County today requires skills handed down for generations. Like their fathers, grandfathers, and in some cases, great-grandfathers before, farmers today need stamina for workdays that begin before sunrise and end well after dark.

They have encyclopedic knowledge of plants, animals, diseases and pests; mechanical expertise to finesse equipment that's often balky and nerves of steel when it comes to financial planning and predicting weather.

They also need skills their forefathers could not have imagined. Today's small farmers have to market as well as grow their crops and that means writing an entertaining blog and schmoozing with customers at farmers markets.

Farmers in Central Massachusetts are now online and face-to-face with the people who buy their products, as the increasing popularity of buying local drives consumers looking for free-range eggs, organic produce and grass-fed meat. The local food market isn't big enough to make anybody rich yet, but small farmers and the work they do are gaining respect and appreciation.

"For the first time, I've had people tell me, `We're glad you're here,'" says Tim Wheeler, owner of Indian Head Farm in Berlin.

The Hertels

Maple Heights Farm, Westminster

Andy and Kerrie Hertel were hiking the Midstate Trail near their home in Westminster on a summer afternoon about five years ago when they came upon the farm that was to change their lives.

"The trail is mostly through the woods and all of sudden we came upon this hilltop field with a barn. It was very scenic," says Mrs. Hertel.

At the time, the couple had no plans to farm. Mrs. Hertel had left her job as a software engineer to raise their four children, and although her husband grew up on his father's dairy farm in Fitchburg and studied agriculture at the University of Massachusetts in Stockbridge, he was working as a builder. "There isn't much money in farming," Andy Hertel notes.

Farm animals, however, have long been a family preoccupation. "We've always had a few chickens," Mrs. Hertel says. Their yard in suburban Westminster has more than enough room for a menagerie that also includes miniature goats and a cow named Milton.

A few months after the trailside discovery, Mrs. Hertel got a mailing from a real estate agent: the farm they'd discovered on their hike was for sale. They decided to "just take a look" and found that the farmhouse, built in 1822, badly needed restoration and the fields had not been tended for years.

The land was ripe for developers, but the Hertels were able to buy it as a farm through the Agricultural Preservation Restriction program. The state program pays the difference between fair market value and agricultural value of farmland in exchange for a permanent restriction preventing the land from being developed.

Maple Heights Farm, named for the grove of maple trees that lines the driveway, will always be farmland. Included in the terms of purchase was a permanent right-of-way for the Midstate Trail. Fifty acres adjacent to the farm were acquired by the town of Westminster as open space.

Today, a herd of beef cattle grazes in the fields. Nearby, pigs root in a pasture and chickens range freely.

An idyllic tableau, but a struggle to maintain; the Hertels haven't been able to move onto the farm yet.

Mr. Hertel is there every day caring for the animals; he also continues to work on building projects. Mrs. Hertel took a part-time job as a...

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