Maple Lane Farms in Preston for sale; owner wants it to remain intact

Preston ― Over the past 50 years, Maple Lane Farms has evolved from growing fruit to offering Christmas trees, growing mushrooms and hydroponic lettuce, bottling currant juice and vodka and even hosting weddings.

Its next transition could be the biggest change to date for what has become a Preston institution: a new owner.

The 225-acre farm, half in Preston, half in North Stonington is listed for sale for $7.75 million by Mystic-based Switz Real Estate. The sale includes the 1791 House inn, The Barn event venue, the 50-acre Christmas tree farm, greenhouses that grow 250,000 heads of hydroponic lettuce per year and a 1993 house that overlooks it all.

Owners Allyn and Kim Brown are preparing to retire to pursue other interests, and while their daughter, Anna, will get married at The Barn next June, she and her fiancé will return to the Boston area for their own careers.

“I’ve invested 48 years of my life running this place, and working seven days a week,” Allyn Brown III, 68, said. “I’d like to, while I’m healthy, do some other stuff. So, we chose to put it on the market.”

But the Browns will be picky when they consider offers.

“We want somebody who is going to continue the operation,” Brown said. “What’s very important to us, we have wedding contracts through next year and into 2026. Those have to be honored, so the buyer is very important to us. If it takes us a year, two years to find the right buyer, so be it. We can wait. We’re not in any hurry, but we had to start someplace.”

Maple Lane takes summers off from hosting weddings. The fall season starts this weekend and runs through mid-November, when the farm gears up for the busy four weeks of Christmas tree season. Weddings resume in the spring.

The 1791 House, the Browns’ former family home, bought by Allyn Brown II in the early 1950s, is rented, and in the fall and spring, wedding parties mostly book it. The Barn is permitted for up to three weddings a week, but Brown said they keep it to one a week, about 28 per year.

Kim Brown, 66, a retired risk manager at Backus Hospital, manages the venue rentals.

Innovation and transition

Brown’s father, a Norwich attorney, probably shocked his wife, Barbara, in the early 1950s, when he bought the abandoned, overgrown farm on Northwest Corner Road. The 1791 house had no electricity and no running water. Giant maple trees lined the dirt road, so he named it Maple Lane Farms.

When the power company came, Brown insisted the poles and lines run off the road to avoid cutting down the maple trees. Brown’s father raised young cows and had a few horses.

Two years after he graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 1974, Allyn Brown III took over the farm. He and his wife built their house in 1993. His father lived in the family home until he died in 2015 at age 99. Brown bought his five siblings’ shares of the property and stayed.

Over the years, Brown enjoyed watching thousands of families come to pick strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, apples, pears and peaches.

In large greenhouses, he grew oyster mushrooms for the Franklin Mushroom Farm until it closed. Looking for another use for the greenhouses, he discovered hydroponic lettuce.

The greenhouses now produce 250,000 heads of bright green Boston Bibb lettuce, sold at Big Y supermarkets and distributed by Bozzuto’s, Inc., to independent grocery stores. Labeled, “Living Lettuce,” it bears the Connecticut Grown seal.

He grew black currants, a rare crop in the United States, and started a juice bottling operation in a barn he built. As the juice bottling operation grew, Brown switched to buying currants, and in 2015, moved the juice operation to a large building in the Stanley Israelite Norwich Business Park. Brown sold the Norwich Beverage Co. two years ago.

For a brief time, Brown and a couple friends started what he called a hobby business making vodka and cassis liqueurs.

Weddings began in 2015

After his father died in 2015 and the bottling operation moved to Norwich, Brown said he had a large, vacant historic house and an empty barn. He renovated the barn into an events venue, seating about 90 to 100 people and turned the house into an inn.

There’s a shaded stone patio outside, a gas grill and a large lawn that can hold a large festival tent. The Barn venue was born and has been thriving.

Christmas tree season starts in early October, when the farm will start taking timed reservations for tree hunters, another innovation started last year after Maple Lane had become bombarded with customers on Thanksgiving weekend for two straight years.

“We actually sold a year’s worth of trees in three days,” Brown said. “We just can’t maintain that, so we went to a reservation system.”

The farm takes a set number of reservations for each half-hour block of business hours. Brown said the online reservation system is upgraded this year, allowing customers to switch their reservations if necessary.

“We did it to manage the farm,” Brown said. “A tree grows a foot a year. You can’t overcut. And by controlling the crowd, you get better customer service.”

Town officials praised the farm and the Browns.

“Like many others, it was my family tradition to go cut down our tree at Maple Lane,” First Selectwoman Sandra Allyn-Gauthier. “They’ve contributed to the community so much.”

Town Planner Kathy Warzecha called Maple Lane’s operation “top notch,” and Selectman Jerry Grabarek, a longtime local dairy farmer, called the farm “absolutely gorgeous.”

“He has always been an asset to the community,” Warzecha said of Brown. “Although I am sad to see this go on the market, we need to respect their decision to sell. I’m sure it was a difficult decision for them. I hope someone at least as dedicated will purchase the property and continue it as the beautiful farm that it is.”

c.bessette@theday.com

Editor’s Note: This version corrects Allyn Brown III’s age.