Farm History
At Hickory Corner Farm, we value our farm family heritage while looking forward to our future.
The original farmhouse on our property was constructed by Aaron Forman in 1802. The property was passed through several hands before Clement Updike bought the property in 1868, the first in our family to own this farm. It was quickly turned over to his son, Levi Updike, and it has been passed down through our family ever since.
Throughout the years, each generation built upon the contributions of the last. From the 1860s to the 1900s, it was a basic subsistence farm of the time with cows, horses, chickens, and pigs.
Around the turn of the century, they started really focusing on orchards. Half the farm became an apple orchard, and the other was various fruits, berries, and grains. Apples were sold in Trenton markets and cider mills. The farm was aptly named Lee Orchards. Charles Lee and his son, Levi Lee, did well with this until the Great Depression hit. Things were difficult for everyone during that period, but they pulled through thanks to Levi’s hard work and persistence.
In 1938, Levi’s son, 11-year-old Richard Lee, noticed that many of his friends were involved with the 4H organization, and he decided he wanted to join, too. At that time, 4H was a 100% agricultural youth group with many different clubs, such as the dairy club, equine club, horticulture club, and so on. Our county was very rural back then, and 4H was very popular. By the time Richard signed up, the only club that had an opening left was the turkey club, so it wasn’t long after that he received his first set of turkeys.
He started with 36 turkeys, raised them, and then dressed them out, selling them to family members, friends, and neighbors. It went so well that the next year he doubled his flock, and he did the same the following year. Not only was it a nice amount of spending money, but Richard really enjoyed this new venture, and it continued to grow through his high school years.
When Richard graduated high school in 1945, World War II was just beginning to wind down in Europe, but there was still a draft. He ended up drafted into the U.S. Army and was stationed in Italy as a radio man for nearly two years. The whole time he could not wait to get back home to his beloved farm.
When Richard did come home from his required service, he found that life on the farm had been hard while he was away. His father, Levi, had continued his business of wholesaling apples, eggs, honey, and a few vegetables to the Mom and Pop markets and restaurants in Trenton and the surrounding communities, and also through the Hightstown Tri-County Auction Market. There were several other farms in the area doing much of the same thing, which kept the profit margins pretty low.
The farm was in debt following the Great Depression, and Levi still owed the bank $5,000 (a considerable sum at that time), with no ability to pay it off in sight. Levi had also been helping his mother care for his father, Charles, who had been in poor health for quite some time, and who passed away while Richard was in Italy. Levi was just tired, worn out, and ready to quit farming.
Levi told Richard that he was contemplating taking a job opening as a bus driver for a route that ran from Hightstown to New Brunswick. The pay was good, and he’d even have weekends off! With the sale of the farm, he could easily pay off the debt hanging over him.
Richard was shocked. He had big plans for the farm and did not want to lose it. He had the idea to begin raising turkeys by the thousands, and suggested this to his father. Levi, who really did enjoy farming, didn’t want to dash his son’s dreams, and he agreed to partner with him and give it a go.
Within two years, the farm was out of debt and turning a profit! In homage to the turkeys that saved the family farm, Richard renamed the business Lee Turkey Farm.
By the late 1950s, Richard and Levi were raising 8,000+ turkeys a year. Most of them were being sold live to markets and small butcher shops, with around 1,000 of them being processed right on the farm and sold directly to customers, cleaned and oven-ready.
In the 1960s, supermarkets came into existence. The market for small-scale butchers and Mom and Pop shops dried up. Lee Turkey Farm was too small of an operation to supply the supermarkets, but the demand for quality, oven-ready turkeys continued to grow. Once again, Richard adapted, reducing the annual flock to 5,000, with all processing done on the farm, and all sold oven-ready to individual consumers, as well as a few restaurants and smaller food markets and delis.
During this same time, he was also selling apples and other produce through the local auction market, but it became very corrupt. Bidders would get together before the auction, agree to bid at a certain price, and then split the load afterwards. Richard read about a farmer in Michigan who was doing pick-your-own cherries, so in 1964 Richard and his wife, Ruth, decided to try it with apples and strawberries. Thus, Lee Turkey Farm became the first public Pick-Your-Own farm in New Jersey. It was so successful that they expanded it to include peaches, sweet corn, and additional produce.
When Richard’s son, Ronny, was in high school, his father came up with the idea to give him some land of his own to plant his own crops to sell. Ronny started with pumpkins and peas, and that quickly expanded to include peppers, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, melons, blackberries, and more. Ronny went into partnership with his parents in 1984.
Richard and his wife, Ruth, also began giving tours to local school children in the 1960s. As they became more popular, neighbors were hired as guides. When Ronny graduated high school, he began filling in when a guide didn’t show up, and it became quickly obvious that tour groups would much rather have the actual farmer as their guide, especially when that farmer was as entertaining as Ronny. Ultimately, he became the only guide.
Eventually, for various reasons, we stopped selling our turkeys off property and cut down our turkey production to 2,500 turkeys annually, selling only directly to the individual consumer.
In 1999, our annual corn maze was first added to the farm. There was a drought that summer, and Ronny was looking for a way to still profit off of his corn field. Funnily enough, the employee who helped Ronny map out the first maze using a pencil and graph paper while Ronny was cutting it ended up marrying Ronny’s oldest daughter, Charli, and now lives on the farm! We have continued to have a corn maze every year since then, and it is fun for the whole family!
Ronny and his wife, Janet’s, time running the farm has been a season of both continuation and expansion- a season for adding a wider variety of fruits and vegetables, for beautifying the farm, for carrying on the previous generations’ legacy and growing the business enormously.
In 2025, after 87 years, we made the difficult decision to discontinue turkey production on the farm.
There were a lot of reasons for that decision, but the straw that ultimately broke the camel’s (or turkey’s?) back for us is that getting poults (baby turkeys) from the hatchery became a real difficulty.
When Richard first started raising turkeys, he was able to purchase the poults at a local hatchery right in Cranbury, the next town over. After that hatchery closed, we were able to have them delivered from various companies in the mid-west for many years. At some point, the large mid-west hatcheries decided that we were not a large enough farm to deal with. (They actually dropped all the turkey farms in NJ at the same time!)
We eventually landed on a hatchery in West Virginia around 2010. This worked out fine for many years, but as time went on, we were increasingly deprioritized by the hatchery since we are considered a small grower at 2500 turkeys annually.
For years, they delivered the turkeys to us, but one year they decided we were no longer worth the drive, so we had to drive 7 hours each way to West Virginia to pick them up ourselves two to three times a year. It also cost us $5 per poult. For a larger grower, they deliver the poults and charge half the price per bird.
They would also show up to the pickup location a couple of hours late and change the pickup dates around on us because the needs of the larger growers came first. It became a difficulty because we relied on a certain date range to get the sizes that we needed in time for Thanksgiving.
Since we no longer have turkeys, the decision was made in 2026 to change the farm name to Hickory Corner Farm.
Nowadays, Ronny and Janet have moved into town, and Ronny still shows up for work every day. Ronny’s son, Dylan, lives on the farm, and they work side-by-side farming the property. Ronny’s daughter, Charli, lives in the farmhouse with her husband and four kids and runs the farm market, social media, and more. Ronny’s mother, Ruth, still resides in the white house that was built at the front of the property in 1923 by Levi Lee.
As the farm transitions to a new era, we will be figuring out what the future holds for the next generation. We continue to grow the same fruits and vegetables that you know and love, with the same quality you’ve come to expect. Dylan and Charli have ideas to try in the coming years, and we intend to keep this farm going through the 7th generation, hopefully longer!
