Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1039010
99 Michael Smolak has a memory of bedtime as a child on his family farm in North Andover, where he grew up with his parents, grandpar- ents, and siblings all in one house. e family would call out to each other before going to sleep as they lay in bed at night, their bedroom doors flung open in the 300-year-old homestead. "It was like the Waltons," he says. "We would say goodnight to each other, but it was in Polish." Memories are everywhere on the farm, from the Native American arrowheads found on the property that date back thousands of years to the "For Sale" sign in the attic that was taken down when his grandparents—Polish immi- grants Martin and Magdalenna Smolak—bought the farm in 1927. Memories are in the farm's pine grove, where couples have exchanged their wedding vows; in its antique apple orchard; and carried within families who mark the seasons year after year by picking their own berries, apples, pumpkins, and Christmas trees. So many of those memories are woven into Michael Smolak's life and the land itself. But he's still making memories, and working as hard as ever to make the farm profitable and continue his family's legacy of farming the land. "People say, 'You've lived here your whole life,'" he says. "And I smile and say, 'Not yet.'" Smolak understood decades ago that "in eastern Massachusetts…growing fruits and vegetables and berries really isn't profitable." Instead, it's the "ancillary things" that make money. And Smolak Farms has become really good at those ancillary things. "I'm good at some things and I'm bad at other things," he says. "I'm not good at figures and employee management. I do it, but only because I have to." But he is good at innovating and market- ing, and it shows. e Smolaks built a farm stand with a bakery in 1985. ey host kids' birthday parties and welcome hundreds of schoolkids who visit on field trips to take hayrides, pick apples, and learn where their food comes from. ere's a play- A F A R M E R ' S L I F E Michael Smolak is a steward of a multigenerational farm in North Andover. BY ALEXANDRA PECCI Michael Smolak of Smolak Farms PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUG LEVY