Brewster Celebrates Summer Solstice At Farm

BREWSTER – The solstice came to Brewster last Friday, June 21, and the Allard Farm celebrated with food, music, beer and wine, crafts, tie dye T-shirts, plants and more plants. Popular crooner and guitarist Tim Sweeney provided music along with the band Catfish, all the way from Florida.

At the end of Eldredge Road, the farm and nursery winds down the hill to small ponds, open fields, fenced in fields, dirt roads and sheds. Everywhere was utilized for parking for the well-attended, with crowds of revelers perusing the displays of annuals and perennials, many in bloom.

The nursery began in the 1950s, supplying landscapers and gardeners when it was opened by Arthur and Virginia Allard. They pieced together a series of properties beyond the radio towers and cement plant creating a real farm that closed in 2000. It was revived by John Allard and Marjorie McGinnis.

“We opened it a year before COVID,” John Allard said. “We took one year off. Everything on the boards is potted here. We bring in nursery stock. The perennials and annuals are all produced organically. Most all the vegetables are all seeded here and grown annually.”

Perennials come from root plugs or seeds.

“We started out with a farm strand at the end of the road and it took off pretty quickly,” Allard said. “Two years before COVID I did tree work, mulching, all that stuff.”

He’s glad to be back in the business after a long time away, and all the customers enjoying the longest day of the year would agree it’s great to see the colorful farm back in bloom.

“My mom and dad bought the place in 1950. They bought that piece in 1967 and this piece in 1972 and the end of the road, where the office is, in 1976,” Allard said. “They were both in the business. My mom would drive the pickup down to Rhode Island, load it up with plants, and bring it back. I’m the only one (of the brothers) that stayed in landscaping.”

Allard had to get back to directing the parking and monitoring the food and music, all of which was free. He expects to make the expense back in extra sales over the weekend. Catfish sang the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Gray,” with its chorus of “I will survive,” a fitting tribute to the farm.