Fall fun at Peabody's landmark Brooksby Farm

By JAMIE JAMIESON

Essex County Newspapers

PEABODY _ Homespun is the right word to describe the Brooksby Farm Harvest Festival, a nostalgic day of fun at a landmark farm in Peabody.

The annual celebration is scheduled for Sunday, Oct. 14, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Organizers of the city-sponsored day at the farm have designed the event around the kinds of simple things kids used to do _ things that don't cost a lot of money.

Farm manager Jim O'Brien thinks the best part of the festival is the pile of hay in front of the barn.

"We get 300 to 400 bales of hay and break them up," he said. "The kids thoroughly love it. You'll see hundreds of kids in there throwing around the hay and they love it."

Brooksby Farm is a 250-acre property the city of Peabody bought for conservation purposes in 1976. It's an apple orchard and a working farm with 65 acres of apple trees, fields of vegetables, a retail store and a barn with farm animals.

The farm offers apple picking from Sept. 5 to Columbus Day, but there's no apple picking the day of the festival.

"Thirty years ago it probably wouldn't have meant too much, but this is the last working farm in the City of Peabody," O'Brien said. "When people look out from our farmstand here, you could be in New Hampshire."

It's not at all unusual for 5,000 people to show up for this homespun celebration.

Donna Healey has been chairman of the committee that stages the festival for 14 years now. She remembers when they decided to put out a few bales of hay for the kids the first year. "Well, we doubled it and doubled it and doubled it," she said.

People came up with other good, simple ideas, like offering hay rides through the orchard, having face painting, and letting the kids pet the animals. This year they're adding spin art. Instead of a live band, they've asked back the deejay who was such a hit at the Strawberry Festival last spring.

"It's a great day," Healey said. "We have storytellers who come. Another woman brings animals _ particularly birds of prey. There's a group of people who come who compete internationally in horseshoes ... People step into the pit with them and learn how to pitch."

The food is pretty simple too, things like cider and doughnuts, hot dogs and hamburgers, and fresh popped popcorn. "We were laughing the other day about the amount of popcorn we go through," she said.

At the heart of the festival are some homespun contests _ an apple pie bakeoff, a scarecrow making contest, and a pumpkin decorating contest. The festival is also the windup for a long-standing photography contest.

Those who enter compete for blue ribbons and bragging rights, nothing else.

"What we've tried to do with this is to make it as noncompetitive a competition as possible," Healey said. Handouts with the rules for all the contests are available at Peabody City Hall and at Brooksby Farm.

On the day of the festival the entries are due in the morning. Scarecrows are propped up in the pumpkin patch. Photos are hung in the barn.

Liz O'Brien, Jim O'Brien's wife, who is an apple pie judge at the Topsfield Fair, organizes the pie competition. "We've had as few as eight and as many as 28. We've had as many men win as we have women. Every year it is a challenge," Healey said.

About 150 volunteers run the harvest festival. "It is a place people can come and truly have it cost them nothing," Healey said. "Bring a picnic lunch. Take some pony rides and hay rides and dance. There isn't much a family can do that doesn't cost them a penny."

There are some costs associated with the festival. The committee sells tickets for a quarter each that can be exchanged for food and a few activities, such as face painting. But the costs really are low and there's no admission or parking fee.

Parking is offered on the Shaw's side of the Northshore Mall. A free shuttle runs from the foot of Felton Street, behind the mall, to the farm.

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