Middlefield and Lyman Orchards: Ten Generations on One Farm
Near Hartford, Connecticut
Middlefield, Connecticut is a small town in Middlesex County with one remarkable claim: Lyman Orchards has been owned by the same family for every year since seventeen forty-one, now spanning ten generations. John Lyman started with thirty-seven acres in the Connecticut River valley and grew crops, raised livestock, and traded locally. Over the next two centuries the farm grew, and the family eventually turned it toward fruit on a large scale. Today Lyman Orchards covers eleven hundred acres and remains one of New England's oldest family businesses, a living thread from colonial Connecticut to the present.
