Moving slowly so as not to dislodge its oversized cargo, a truck hauling a flatbed made the short trek from Old Tavern Farm to Old Homestead Farm on Sunday, moving a 30-year-old greenhouse from one location to the other. Chelsea and Ben Hatcher, owners of Old Homestead Farm on Greenville Road in New Ipswich, have been planning the move for weeks.
The greenhouse was built by Chelsea’s father when her family owned the land Old Tavern Farm is built on. When her parents retired, much of the land was placed into conservation, but a nearly 40-acre piece was subdivided and is now where the Hatchers are building their own smallholder farm, where they board horses, raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, and beef cows. And soon, they will be growing their own vegetables in Chelsea’s family greenhouse.
When the greenhouse was built, her parents used it to grow flowers and some produce despite the fact that, at the time, the property wasn’t a large working farm, and they certainly didn’t need such a large greenhouse, according to Chelsea. But her father built it anyway, and it carries with it a lot of good memories from her childhood. She knew she wanted to bring it to her new home, the land which once was one piece of her childhood and still carried that legacy.
“Originally, we thought we would take it down piece by piece. But after looking at it a little bit, we realized the easiest way would be to just pick it up as one piece and move it,” said Ben Hatcher. “We’ve moved big things like gazebos and that type of stuff before, but nothing this big. But once we determined this was the easiest way to move it, that’s just what we did.”
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