This Friday meet Kevin and Linda Baird, owners of Cornucopia Farm in Scottsburg, Indiana. Over the course of 30 years, the Bairds have built their farm from a two-acre pumpkin patch into a flourishing fall travel destination. Kevin is the second generation in his family to farm this land, and his sons, Michael and Jared, plan to continue the tradition.
A painted roadside sign declaring this slice of heaven to be Cornucopia Farm lets you know you’re in the right place as you turn down the Bairds’ driveway. High tunnels full of ripening tomatoes and rows upon rows of potted mums line the right side of the road as the world outside the one the Bairds have created over the last three decades disappears.
Getting Ready for Fall
Family photos decorate one wall inside the entrance of their building as it stands ready for the flood of autumn visitors. Empty tables will soon be heaped with produce, farmhouse decorations are priced and hung, and the café is prepared to be stocked and turned into a bustle of activity.
The corn maze has been planted, the pumpkins are ripening on the vine, the mums have been equipped with an automatic watering system to cut down on labor and the sunflowers are waiting for rain before reaching toward the sky and blooming.
The outside world might know it as Cornucopia Farm, but Kevin and Linda simply call it their dream. It started with Kevin’s father moving to the county they now call home in the 1950s. He joined a family operation for a few years before buying what Kevin and Linda call the “home farm” in Franklin Township, Indiana. There, he operated a small dairy and instilled a love of farming and the land in his son.
After they got married, Kevin and Linda moved around before finding themselves in Tennessee on her parents’ farm with the plan to stay a year and then make a decision for the future.
“He wanted to come back to Indiana, I was like, ‘Okay, I'm willing to go if you'll raise pumpkins,’” Linda said. “He would do anything to get back to Indiana and he was true to his word, so we started raising pumpkins from that.”
Source: farmers.gov
Photo Credit: gettyimages-harvepino
Categories: Indiana, Sustainable Agriculture, Weather