Jan and Barb’s Story at Blue Moon Berry Farm
Story and photos by Karinne Heise
High on the shoulder of Warner’s Waldron Hill, Blue Moon Berry Farm’s vista is stunning. A rare-in-New Hampshire expanse of sky. Mt. Kearsarge shining on the northern horizon. Acres of blueberry bushes, the red stems of new growth adding vivid color to the winter snowpack. Bright white birches in the forest edging the fields. For landowners Jan Gugliotti and Barb Dieckman, the opportunity to preserve this farm in perpetuity, its beautiful view, and u-pick blueberry heritage with a Five Rivers Conservation Easement is a dream come true.
Jan grew up in Connecticut, and as a young teen visited New Hampshire with a friend, an experience that shaped her hopes and dreams for the future. After her trip, Jan realized, “I wanted to be a farmer and live on a dead-end road on top of a mountain in New Hampshire.” Finding her way back to the Granite State took some time. Jan attended college in the Midwest and pursued a career as an information technology consultant, traveling all over the country. Dartmouth’s Tuck School drew her back to the state to earn an MBA, and eventually she took charge of the Bean Goose Inn, a bed and breakfast in Warner. When Jan recognized she was in the same New Hampshire town she had visited as an impressionable teenager, she delighted in this happy coincidence.
Barb grew up in Minnesota, and when a local psychic foresaw that she was “going to go east to mountains and an ocean,” she found the fortune teller’s prediction dubious. After college, Barb worked as a nurse in the Twin Cities. When her daughter Gretchen was a teenager, they travelled to New Hampshire, and happened to stay at Bean Goose Inn. Reluctant at first to leave urban life in the Midwest, Barb ultimately found her way east again, to a state with mountains and an ocean, and joined Jan in Warner. Over the years, Barb earned an MBA from UNH and a Master’s in Public Health from Dartmouth, and she is presently the Director of Knowledge Map, coordinating patient education for Dartmouth Health.
In 2000, Grand View, a blueberry farm near the top of Waldron Hill, came up for sale. Barb believed the farm was “a community asset” and important to preserve for the future. For Jan, the farm was her childhood dream come true. “The stars aligned,” she said, “and we bought it.” Their mutual feeling of good fortune inspired them to name the farm Blue Moon Berry Farm. As Jan put it, “once in a blue moon something wonderful happens.”
Over the 25 years they’ve owned the farm, Jan and Barb have discovered that farming is really hard work. Pruning thousands of blueberry bushes. Mowing between the rows. Feeding chickens and ducks. Tending a small herd of sheep and an alpaca. Caring for four cats, three dogs and a rabbit. While the smaller dog, Mitzi, helps herd the sheep, the larger dogs Tova and Zeke, both about the size of adult bears, protect livestock from bobcats, foxes and coyotes. Zeke is so powerful that one afternoon he proudly trotted up to the house with a giant moose antler in his mouth – as if only carrying a small steak bone.
Jan and Barb have found joy in their farming life, too. Some u-pick farms have strict rules about not eating while picking, but Barb noted, “It’s more important for us for people to have a good time.” They’ve owned the farm long enough to see folks who were once youngsters playing and eating handfuls of berries while their parents chatted and picked buckets of berries return to the farm as adults to delight in the fun, top-of-the-mountain experience with their own children. Taking care of livestock also provides a sense of satisfaction, and Barb, a fiber artist, uses wool from the farm’s sheep for spinning and dying yarn.
While Jan and Barb have been the primary caretakers of the farm, they’ve also had a lot of family help. Daughter Heidi and her husband, who live nearby, pitch in on “all hands” farm work days, and Gretchen, as soon as she transitions out of the Army Reserves, will take charge of the farm operation. While a student at UNH, Gretchen took a highly instructive small fruit and tree fruit class from a renowned specialist in the field, Bill Lord, and since graduating, she and her family have spent time living at the farm, learning by doing. Gretchen’s “very Yankee farmer” husband built a thrifty irrigation system as well as a high tunnel to get crops in the ground earlier. And even though they presently don’t live at the farm, her daughters consider it home. “I want to make sure the whole family is recognized for their efforts,” said Gretchen. “We all love it!”
Looking ahead, Gretchen hopes to turn Blue Moon into a sustainable and profitable working farm. Her plans include investing in more irrigation as well as netting to protect blueberries from hotter summers due to climate change. Blueberries are the top priority, but she also wants to expand the farm’s productive season with additional crops and farm-based products like distinctive jams, which she loves to make.
The whole family is grateful to Five Rivers for working out easement terms that will allow them to keep Blue Moon Berry Farm as a working farm while also preserving close to a hundred acres of forested wildlife habitat in Warner’s wonderful Mink Hills. And since, as Gretchen noted, her parents “always wanted to conserve the land,” they donated approximately half of the easement’s value. Generous grants from LCHIP (Land and Community Heritage Investment Program), the Town of Warner Conservation Commission, the NH Farm Future Fund, and the Thomas W. Haas Fund of the NH Charitable Foundation, as well as over $11,000 in private donations, provided the rest of the funding.
Jan and Barb’s conservation easement with Five Rivers closed on lucky St. Patrick’s Day – a serendipitously good omen for the future of Blue Moon Berry Farm. To celebrate, Jan predicted, “We’ll be drinking green beer!”
