Celebrating Smolak Farm

May 5—NORTH ANDOVER — Michael Smolak never planned on becoming a farmer.

"When I left here, I was not coming back," he said.

Smolak set out for the University of Pennsylvania, where he first studied to be an architect. But a mentor convinced him there wouldn't be any jobs in the field when he graduated, so Smolak switched his major to biology and set his sights on becoming a dentist.

The same mentor, a famous painter of forest landscapes named Neil Welliver, said "Think about it for a minute," then suggested Smolak might be happier in a natural setting where he could see the horizon.

"I said, yeah, that puts it in perspective," Smolak said. "The other reason I came back was because, somebody had to, or this whole thing would have been lost."

The thing in question was Smolak Farm, which has been in his family since 1927, and where Smolak has been in charge since 1974.

To show their appreciation for the fact that Smolak came home, and for all that he has accomplished since he did, the North Andover Historical Society is honoring Smolak with its Lifetime Preservation Award on Thursday. The event is being held at Smolak Farm at 315 South Bradford St., from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the North Andover Historical Society website.

"We are so excited to be have a live event, after waiting two years to give Michael his award," said Diane Huster, a member of the society's board.

At the point where Smolak returned to North Andover permanently, his father had died, not long after his grandmother's demise. She and Smolak's grandfather had purchased the farm after immigrating from Poland and working in mills in Maine and Lawrence.

"My grandparents couldn't speak much English," Smolak said. "When my grandfather had his first job interview, he learned what to say, but he had no idea what he was saying."

After her husband's death, Smolak's mother had her hands full taking care of her four other children, along with her father-in-law.

"There was a lot of turmoil," Smolak said. "I'm not complaining, but it was a lot for a 20-something year old kid, but we got through it."

Smolak's grandparents had purchased the property from the Glennie family, who ran it as a dairy farm, which Smolak was happy to discontinue.

"They kept dairy until 1973, August 8, at 3:30 in the afternoon," Smolak said. "The last cow left, and I have not missed them, because they were a lot of work."

Instead, he ordered 300 apple trees, to expand a stock that already included 168 apple trees and 48 peach trees.

"My mother said, 'Where are you ever going to sell all these apples?'" Smolak remembered. "I said, well, we have to do something to make money, because there were years when I had to sell furniture to pay my bills. It was tough."

His grandparents grew field crops along with the apples and peaches, and also raised about 5,000 tomato plants, shipping everything they picked to markets in Boston and Cambridge.

The farm was one of 30 agriculture properties in North Andover when Smolak took over, and he started to transform it in 1985, when he converted the garage across the street from his house into a farm stand.

"My sister, Eileen, worked getting the farm stand established with me," Smolak said. "She passed away 16, 17 years ago. There were five kids and there are four of us left and I just turned 70."

The 130-acre farm now has "the better part of 30 acres of apples," along with five acres of peach trees and plums, three acres of strawberries, three acres of blueberries, two acres of raspberries, and three acres of cherry trees.

"We've probably got about 12 acres of Christmas trees," Smolak said. "We've been adding to this stuff every year."

Around 1990 they started focusing on pick-your-own, which eventually became the only way to profit from fruit crops, along with selling baked goods and ice cream, and creating the penned-in area where tourists bring their children to pet animals.

More recently, the farm added a wedding venue where 20 couples were married last year, and a tent where chefs from high-end restaurants create "Whim Dinners" that feature fresh produce from the farm. In 2006 Smolak purchased 50 acres, now known as Small Oxx Farm, a mile and a half down the road in Boxford where he grows vegetables for a Community Supported Agriculture program.

"I think we had the better part of 300 participants last year," Smolak said. "There's not that much profit in it, but what it does is, it has people come every Wednesday and every Thursday every week for 16 weeks, and while they are here they go in (the farm stand) and they get a reduction in what they spend and it works well for all of us."

Smolak admits that he feels more like a businessman than a farmer these days, when there are only three other farm properties in North Andover, and he credits the state's Agriculture Preservation Restriction program with helping him to keep his farm going.

That involved selling his development rights in 1982 to the state, which holds them in perpetuity in exchange for much needed capital to run the farm. The community, and the environment, benefit from having the land maintained solely for agriculture.

Smolak has also been a public servant, appointed by three presidents to the state Farm Service Agency committee, where his job for 16 years was to "expedite the president's policies."

He is also something of a historian, mounting photographs taken over many decades at Smolak Farm on a barn wall, along with artists' renderings of the original, indigenous occupants.

"There's a site that goes back to 2500 B.C. on the farm, it's been authenticated," Smolak said. "But the farm is roughly 300 years old."

He also organized a Farm Legacy Program for the North Andover Historical Society when he "saw all these farms disappearing," soliciting photographs and documents from farmers, and asking them to answer a questionnaire.

"There were two questions that were really key," Smolak said. "I said, 'What thing or object was most special to you about your farm?' For me, my great uncle from Poland would send these communion wafers at Christmas time, and that was very, very special. Different people had odd things that you would never think."

The other question was, "life being uncertain as it is, how would you like to be remembered?" George Barker of Barker Farm, the country's oldest continuously operated family farm, answered by saying he enjoyed mentoring young people. When the same question was posed to Smolak, he answered, "You'd be here for a couple of hours."

But as he reflects on the fact that he has been running Smolak Farm for 50 years, and has lived on the property "longer than anybody has ever lived here at this point," his focus is on the future.

"The thing that's interesting is, where does it goes from here, and that still is a big question mark," Smolak said.