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Farm Fresh

An enduring farm with food as it's supposed to taste

idywildePhoto: Morgan Ione Yeager

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t wasn’t all that long ago that people ate food grown on farms nearby. That was before we turned the farms into quaintly named subdivisions and condemned ourselves to supermarket fruits, meats, and vegetables that taste like cardboard. There are still a few farms left, though, and one is Idylwilde Farm, opened in 1925 by Italian immigrants who sold the eggs they raised by going door to door with a pushcart, and still run by their grandchildren. Remind yourself what food is supposed to taste like, including homegrown crops in season and other produce piled in mouth-watering pyramids of mangoes, Asian pears, and blood oranges, fresh-squeezed orange and grapefruit juice made in the basement, and a deli with speciality sandwiches for takeout including the Gobbler, a sandwich made of fresh turkey breast from Bob’s Turkey Farm in Lancaster with New England cranberry sauce and homemade stuffing. There are also teas, coffee, chocolates, jam, preserves, cheeses, baked goods, and even candles, plus some impressive commercial greenhouses out back with everything from roses to mulch. Even the wood used to build the post-and-beam store is made of local oak.

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The amount of Massachusetts farmland has declined from 472,500 acres to 378,500 since 1982, a drop of 20 percent.