Fresh spinach in February, flower U-pick give
197-year-old farm a shot at a 7th generation

By Andrew Galarneu

Thanks to a 197-year-old farm, Lockport can eat a modern miracle this winter: fresh lettuce, spinach, and other greens just picked a mile away.

At Terroir General Store, 10 Market St., a glass-fronted fridge gets resupplied with McCollum vegetables regularly, making Jessica Dittly’s shop a must-stop for people who prefer the freshest produce.

Even in winter, when the hoop houses McCollum owners Rick Woodbridge and Bree Bacon installed at McCollum allow the farm to pick fresh vegetables throughout the frozen months. 

Brothers Joel and Hiram McCollum founded McCollum Orchards on 100 acres as the Erie Canal was excavated nearby. They built a house and other buildings of canal stone.

In 2011, Woodbridge, Hiram’s great-great-great grandson,  became the sixth generation to put their hands to making a living from its land. With his wife Bree Bacon, Woodbridge is engaged in a year-to-year battle familiar to many of Western New York’s remaining farming families: making enough to keep the farm. 

Growing greens in February is one of the ways McCollum Orchards’ owners are trying to make a seventh generation of McCollum stewards possible. “When we moved here in 2011 our goal was to save the farm, and it still is,” Bacon said. “To have the farm earn enough money to continue it, hopefully for the next generation. But we’re still taking it one year at a time.” 

Steering the business through an era of rising costs and fluctuating demand takes diversified income streams and the willingness to change what’s not working. The couple planted the area’s first hop vines. Then got into community supported agriculture (CSA), season farm subscriptions. 

After their first child was born, her parents ended the CSA because it took too much time. Today McCollum Orchards supplies produce to Niagara County’s Veggie Van produce distribution program, and several restaurant accounts. The farmstand at 248 N. Adams St., Lockport, serves customers now, along with the McCollum freshness outpost in Terroir.

Farm-to-table dinners, like the one Dittly cooked for McCollum guests last Sunday, are another way to secure customer support. A flower-garden setting, with a dozen chickens pecking and puttering around the garden, added real atmosphere. 

Guests got plum, tomato, burrata and basil salad, focaccia with herbed butter, grilled chard-wrapped keftedes, stuffed chicken breast, and sticky toffee pudding with white peach and soused groundcherries. Many of the ingredients were grown yards away.

Fresh flowers by the bunch are popular now, since customers can stop by McCollum to take advantage of its flowers. The U-pick bouquet stand has everything buyers need, and they can take as long as they want to choose their blooms.

Like many family farmers, they both have other jobs, too. Bacon also handles McCollum’s email newsletter, which alerts recipients to fresh arrivals in the Terroir fridge, and other items of interest. You can sign up for it at the bottom of the farm’s website.

“It’s such a unique place, it’s like a little bit of Europe, somehow in the middle of Lockport,” Woodbridge told last Sunday’s dinner guests. “Our goal is to try to share it with the community. We’re thankful to have all of you come out and share it with us, because it’s a beautiful place, and it’s just so special we want you all to enjoy it too.”

Andrew Galarneu is the author of Four Bites and a contributor to The Buffalo Hive. This article was originally published on Four Bites, September 1, 2024.