NORTHBOROUGH – A few key clues found along the 1.1-mile Old Farm Trail, constructed in 2005-2007, reveal the history of the area before it was a recreational hiking path.
Since the early 1700s, the 100 acres or so to the east of where the trail currently stands was farmland. Most recently it was Stirrup Brook Farm, a dairy farm operating from the 1930s to 1956. Milk production ceased at that time, but the family still had heifers until 1976.
Just a few steps along the trail from the Main Street trailhead, a stone wall wends its way through the woods. Where brambles and low brush grow, it was once open pasture where around 18 cows spent their days grazing.
Allan Bezanson, who grew up at Stirrup Brook Farm (owned by the Haitsma family), recalls running home from school to go fishing at Stirrup Brook before performing farm chores.
The stone wall marked the boundary of the Haitsma property, but that didn’t stop Bezanson and his friends from skiing down the sizable hill that looms to the west. The cedar trees that grew there made excellent fence posts, and the field area further along, which the town mows every few years, made for a thrilling sledding hill.
The field was also leased by Bigelow Nurseries for some time when the farm sold its milk business in 1956, and the nursery cultivated trees that were eventually planted along the Boston Greenway. One can glimpse one of the original farm houses, built in the early 1700s and still privately owned, as you take a sharp right along the field after emerging from the woods.
Returning to the woods, after ascending a short hill, a right turn takes you to an old farm road, now the continuation of the Boroughs Loop Trail, a 33-mile regional trail. Then, a left turn brings you to additional features that remind you of the land’s farming history. A hay loader that was left there in the 1980s by Bezanson’s stepbrother, Donald Haitsma. And―among other cars— sits a 1953 Oldsmobile 88 that was parked there, also by Donald, as its final resting spot when its transmission failed in 1960.
From there, the four-acre back field is the final feature that brings the land full circle to its farming roots. The fertile soil is used for current-day crop production, in recent years leased by Berberian’s Farm, which has grown squash, corn, and peppers.
