By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

VINCENT, Ohio — From full-time dairy cows to face painting and corn mazes, Sweetapple Farm, established in 1940, became an entertainment farm in the fall of 2000.

“Experience the Farm!” the website and promotional brochures urge, and each year about 10,000 people – kids, adults, families – do that. While the 250-acre property, near Marietta, is still a working farm (dairy and grain), it is open to the public by appointment from April until December with public weekends Sept. 19-Nov. 1.

“We’re open in the fall of the year for a 6.5-acre corn maze,” said Mona Barrett, mother of adult children Eric, J.J. and Shelly Stoller, all of whom are involved in the farming operation. “We have pick-your-own pumpkins, face painting for the children, they can also make stuffed scarecrows, people love those. We have food in our market and we have crafts.”

A Scented Garden and a Nursery Rhyme Garden, hayrides and a live Nativity display for one weekend in December are also part of the package.

“It’s our way of teaching people what happens on the farm,” said Barrett. “Our goal is to allow children to understand where meat, milk and eggs come from and how much work it takes to grow a garden and produce vegetables; for visitors to experience the farm and learn what happens.”

Next year pick-your-own blackberries will be added. The parking lots are being improved and expanded to safely and conveniently provide space for school buses, which bring 400-500 children on many days. Weddings, reunions, birthday parties and more keep the big red barn a lively place.

“We have herbs and flowers (in raised beds) and each tour includes a tour of the herb garden. We tell the heritage of the flowers, what it was used for by the pioneers, when it blooms,” said Barrett, who is a Master Gardener. “We allow the children to touch the leaf and smell the lemon verbena.”

On the hayrides a narrator talks about five breeds of dairy cattle and for what they’re suited, and visitors get to feed them hay. In the scarecrow building kids can stuff old clothes with straw, and then add a face and hat. “People keep them for years as a fall decoration,” Barrett said.

There are Moonlight Maze Walks and Spooky Hayrides near Halloween. In the Nursery Rhyme Garden, kids can pose for photos by looking through an oval cutout in a painted wooden sign depicting a nursery rhyme scene.

Everyone enjoys “Goat on the Mountain,” a fenced ramp the goats eagerly climb in pursuit of a treat at the top. The live Nativity in December is free to the public. It’s a family tradition, said Barrett.
Despite the farm’s name, apples are not part of its operation. In the 1980s when it was still a dairy farm, Barrett and her husband, Jim, who was killed in a tractor accident in 1999, were in the barn milking the cows. A calf had just been born. Barrett looked up and saw the name “Sweetapple” as a brand name on a PVC pipe in the barn; so, they named the calf Sweetapple.

Eventually that became the farm’s name. With the coming of the 911 phone numbers all roads had to have a name. One of the Barretts’ neighbors suggested Sweetapple for their unnamed road, and it became official.

Many of those neighbors help out on the farm during their busy season. “Our neighbors have fully supported us,” Barrett said.
For information call 740-678-7447 or visit www.sweetapplefarm.com