Page 6 - BusinessWest September 18, 2023

The corn maze has become a huge part of the business plan at Warner Farm, and it includes a large playground and other attractions.
Staff Photo
“We’re posing that question out in the maze and inviting people to answer it,” he said. “There’s a trivia game all about the differ-
ent elements of artificial intelligence and robotics, and we’ll have
a kids’ game, where they’ll use binary language to decode a secret message. And there will be a few stations out there where we pose some more of the deeper ethical questions about AI and ask people to consider them.
“‘Can computers think?’ That’s one of the questions we ask,” he went on, adding that the maze is designed to prompt visitors to think about technology and its place in the world.
For this issue, BusinessWest visited Warner Farm and this year’s maze to learn about how this has become much more than a place where art and agriculture come together.
Kernels of Wisdom
Tracing the history of the farm, Wis- seman said it dates back to the early 1700s, when Eleaser Warner — a descendent of the family who arrived not long after the Mayflower and even- tually settled in what was then called Swampfield, now Sunderland — started tilling land near what is now the cen- ter of town. (Indeed, the farm’s mailing address is South Main Street).
This is his mother’s family and and one of the founding families of Sunder- land, he said, adding that, in the begin- ning, it was subsistence farming, and it remained that way for several genera-
tions. Over time, the farm started growing and selling potatoes, onions, and, later, strawberries.
“In the ’60s, my grandfather was introduced to the concept of pick-your-own strawberries, and we were one of the first people to do pick-your-own strawberries in the Valley, and it really took off,” Wisseman noted. “That was the first venture into the agri-tourism world and inviting people down to the farm to have that farm experience.”
Today, the farm’s main crops are strawberries and sweet corn, but it also grows tomatoes, melons, peas, green beans, peaches, and “a few apples,” he said. It sells wholesale to local stores, other farms, and other CSAs, while operating its own CSAs, including the Millstown Farm Market.
Wisseman said he grew up on the farm until he was 10, when he and his mother relocated to the Cincinnati area, and he would return to the area to work on the farm while in high school and col- lege. He graduated from the College of Worcester in Ohio with no real intention of making the farm his career, but ... his commence- ment coincided with the start of the Great Recession in 2008.
With few other opportunities available, he came back to the farm
“In the ’60s, my grandfather was introduced to the concept of pick-your-own strawberries, and we were one of the first people to do pick-your- own strawberries in the Valley, and it really took
off. That was the first venture into the agri-tourism world and inviting people down
to the farm to have that farm experience.”
We’ve Tallied Up
75 Years
MBK is proud to celebrate 75 years of partnering with the local business community. Here’s to 75 more!
413-536-8510 | mbkcpa.com
6 SEPTEMBER 18, 2023
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