I grew up with stories of Mill Spring Farm, when Thomas Jefferson Miller gave the farm in 1895 to his youngest son, George, for one dollar and “his love and affection.” Of how George’s 3 sons, one of whom was my great- grandfather, survived there when at age 5 his parents died within six months, leaving them orphans.  Of Esther, my great grandmother, giving hard boiled eggs to people down on their luck during the Great Depression.  And the story that was loved most of all was how my grandparents met picking strawberries there, and how those strawberries pulled my grandpa’s family out of poverty.  My grandma loved to tease my grandpa saying that he would just come out to the fields on his horse to show off.  He would smile, and deny it saying it was nothing of the sort, he was just there to talk to friends. There were stories of ice cream parties at the end of the picking season for all the kids that had helped.  Later, Charlie and Esther got the grandkids their very own horse for fun at the farm.  At Mill Spring there was both hard work and fun.

Then there was the sad story that on one of the coldest nights in February 1958 Esther came out of the barn from gathering eggs and saw the farmhouse in flames.  The men ran to gather a few family belongings, dedicated Nankin firefighters fought till their clothes were frozen, but by the end of the night great- grandma would say, “I don’t even own a toothbrush.”  It was this event that caused the family to sell the farm that my great- great grandparents died on, that my grandfather was born on, and that the family had dedicated their lives to building.  But the stories of love for each other, and love of that farm in good and bad times, continued to be shared in the family.  

It would be my tenth birthday when my great grandfather said, “You know you and my dad have the same birthday,” which only served to enamor me more with the family farm lore.  Soon after, my mother signed me up to “get in touch with my family’s roots” by spending a season picking strawberries at cousin Howard’s adjoining strawberry farm.  At age 12, I would look across the field wishing that someone would fix up Charlie’s old barn.  “It’s just beautiful.  The roof is like a rainbow,” I thought.  The next spring as Esther’s health began to fail, we stopped and picked some of the daffodils from the lane to cheer her up.  Years later, when I had children of my own, grandpa and I would go and peek into the old barn, now overgrown with vines and he would tell me stories of playing basketball in the upstairs and how the men had put up the timbers to form the beautiful arch of the roof I was photographing.  Thankfully, the owners of the farm allowed our sentimentality with these brief visits.

After the farm changed ownership again and my grandmother had passed, I was looking for comfort in the place where my grandparents’ 75 year long marriage had started with picking strawberries.  I had been divorced for almost ten years when I reached out to the new owner and asked, “By chance do my grandmother’s daffodils still come up along the lane? If they do, would you mind sharing a few of the bulbs with me, as I love to garden?”  And it was picking those daffodils that I met Lou, and we had more fun doing nothing for two hours on that farm. And so, our Mill Spring Farm story began. “That farm is a special place,” my grandpa cried when I told him the news of my budding love for Lou. 

Like the daffodils, Mill Spring represents love that persists in good and bad times.  With this as our mission, Lou and I hope to represent our shared family values of taking care of the land, taking care of the others, and providing wholesome products and experiences we are proud of to the community.

Welcome to Mill Spring Farm. We look forward to seeing how our family farm can become part of your family’s story!

 -Lou and Aimee Turchyn