First incorporated in New Hampshire, Our company started by raising cattle and hogs for selling farm meat in 1967. Maple syrup, produced on our land, became a focal point for visitors, as well as honey from our hives. In addition, Jolly Farmer products soon included freshly pressed apple cider and homemade granola.
The hallway where Jolly Farmer started selling its farm-raised pork. In the article pictured to the right, it was described: “People used to step inside the front door and ask where the store was… We had one refrigerator and one freezer.”
These delicious products inspired an expansion to a larger country store and restaurant using our own recipes and high-quality farm foods. After adding a petting zoo, ice cream bar, and water fountain, the restaurant became the “Jolly Farmer Village” and was always landscaped using hundreds of flowers, grown on-site and tended with care. With the fuel crisis in the late 1970s, it became impossible to attract enough travelers to our location, and we transferred to a wholesale company selling our famous pies.
The “Friendly Roost” operated out of this building during Jolly Farmer’s earliest years.
Our love of growing things was the easy segue into the greenhouse industry. Started in 1982, our wholesale nursery offered flowering plants to garden centers in New England. Over the next few years, our one greenhouse quickly became 3, then 6, then 18, then finally 40. With the invention of the plug tray, we began offering seedlings, shipping our trays further and further afield until our market included all states of the continental US and even Alaska.
Jolly Farmer’s first greenhouse. The boy in the picture now works at Jolly Farmer as a grower.
Back in its earliest days, this small straight truck was the entirety of Jolly Farmer’s transport fleet.
Even at full capacity in this facility, our orders exceeded the space allowed.
Finding ourselves constricted for greenhouse space and available labor, we opened a second location in New Brunswick Canada in 1996. Constructed on a sloping piece of land purchased from H.J. Crabbe & Sons, Ltd, the greenhouse facility required a large cut-and-fill project to provide a level surface.
