A green-eyed cat streaked out of the DeMeritt Hill Farm store followed by Santa Claus, who stamped his boots and took a deep breath of the crisp December air. He raised his arms, causing blue jeans to show beneath the red and white fuzzy overcoat, and laughed out a "Merry Christmas" to two cars just entering the parking lot. Eyes twinkling behind a pair of glasses, his smile just visible above a curly white beard, he looked every bit the part the many visiting children believed him to be.
But the jolly figure leading the way into the Farm's grove of Christmas trees was not the famous Saint Nick, but the farm's manager, Mike Lynch. Hired on a whim, a total stranger to the owners and with no agricultural background, Lynch has been nearly single-handedly running DeMeritt Hill for the past four years.
"I love it," he said. "I enjoy working outdoors, and when you live and work on a farm, you have a stake in it."
And a stake in DeMeritt Hill Farm is no small thing. Founded in the early 1800s, it is among the original New England family farms that grew vegetables and livestock both to subsist on and trade. About a century later, owners found the dense clay soil and ledge rock a natural fit for growing fruit and the orchards were planted, including apple, peach and nectarine trees. As time passed, the traditional New England farmer became a dying breed. Regionally, family farms converted to commercial sales in order to salvage profits, and even that eventually faded.
"Nothing's like it was years ago," Lynch said. "There's no wholesale market out there."
When the current owners bought the land in 1992, they saved it from a large but quickly declining wholesale operation and transformed the place into a family-oriented haven of nature walks, socializing and learning.
"A farm today has to be entertainment," said owner Meg Wilson, a retired schoolteacher who lives on Long Island in the Farm's off-season with her husband, Roy.
And entertainment is their specialty. Miles of nature trails wind through the Farm's 126 acres of rolling land, some just highlighting the beauty of the New Hampshire landscape and others lined with sculptures of dinosaurs and paintings of fairy tale scenes, or signs describing the vegetation along the way. A typical fall weekend will see the 13-acre hillside below the orchards speckled with a "sea of people" with picnic lunches, according to Lynch, who revels in the idea of people spending an afternoon there instead of 15 minutes buying their produce in the supermarket.
"I'm on a tractor constantly moving people in and out," he said. "They call me the 'orchard express.'"
For Halloween, college students don the costumes of Cinderella, Batman or Harry Potter that delight kids on their journey along the "enchanted hayride." When the mercury starts sinking, the farm store starts heating up their cider and selling wreaths, pies, and Christmas trees. In December, they launch their "Christmas Experience," where families get hayrides into the grove, candy handed to them by the Big Man himself, and a story read to them by none other than Mrs. Claus.
"The deal is I don't have to dress up for the enchanted forest hayrides so I have to suck it up and be Santa," Lynch said. "I kinda yuck it up a bit."
Brittany Powers, a recent UNH alumna and the Farm's barn manager who plays the role of Mrs. Claus, has been working for DeMeritt Hill for three years, taking care of the 12 horses on site. Last year was the first year she and Lynch "tag teamed" The Christmas Experience, which she describes as "a fake world," complete with visions of sugar plums and a scaled-down version of the North Pole. She can think of no better co-worker.
"He really plays his role up with the kids," she said. "He's like a different person with the costume on than with it off."
Indeed, cavorting around the woods of New Hampshire in a Santa suit is far from the norm of Lynch's past. He spent 22 years in the Air Force doing aircraft maintenance, eventually reaching the position of the production superintendent. After more than two decades of the same work, change became an appealing concept, although he loved the Service, and he retired the airforce to go to the company Lockheed Martin, which gave him the opportunity to make a little more money. Still, the thought of a career change nagged at him.
He was going to school during nights at nearby Daniel Webster College where he earned a degree in Organizational Management, which he felt would compliment the skills he had already acquired.
"But I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up," he said. "In fact, I wasn't sure I wanted to grow up."
One day in the midst of this confusion, Lynch drove by DeMeritt Hill Farm. He stopped in to check out the hayrides, his young grandson in mind.
"I was really impressed with the place," he said, and told Meg Wilson so during a casual conversation they struck up about how the season was going.
Wilson's previous manager had taken off in the midst of the busy season and she and her husband had been placing ads in fruit growers' magazines across the nation, trying to find a trustworthy replacement.
She handed Lynch a business card.
"God was watching out for me," she said.
Within two or three days, Lynch sent the Wilson's a well-written letter and a resume, conveying his interest in the position.
"Our theory is that a well-written letter is a sign of intelligence," said Ms. Wilson. "You can teach fruit [and agriculture], but not intelligence."
The rest, according to Ms. Wilson, is history. Lynch took the job and quickly learned all there was to know about managing a farm, became certified in many areas, including fruit spraying, and got along well with the few, seasonal employees who run the farm's bakery and kitchen, the horse barns, and the many seasonal activities offered to the thousands of people throughout New England that take advantage of the Farm's resources every year.
"It's a nice way of life," Lynch said. "It's rural, and quiet most of the year. Just me and the golden retriever."
The only busy period is August through December, where Lynch makes use of the people and marketing skills he acquired from his previous jobs. And it is these crowds, coming for the kid and family-friendly atmosphere, that separate DeMeritt Hill from the rest of the farms in New England.
"Of all occupations in America, farming is facing the greatest decline," states www.foodsecurity.org. "With increasing costs for land and water, the unchecked growth of agribusiness, development pressure and shrinking markets due to globalization, growers find themselves selling the farm in order to feed their own families." The site goes on to state that most farms are unable to remain in business without the owners holding various other jobs to stay financially afloat.
The creative style adopted by the Wilson's and Lynch's active role in maintaining the atmosphere enables DeMeritt Hill to continue to operate and still offer programs such as The Christmas Experience.
Last weekend, Lynch donned his Santa suit for the first time this season, rubbing his hands together in the cold, and smiling. Every weekend up until Christmas he will fill a wagon full of families and lead them out into a grove of firs and blue spruce, laughing all the way. In between, if he is not hauling hay or serving cider, he will be grinning into the eyes of an eager little kid, wishing them a merry Christmas.
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