Torrey Farms is a large

family farm A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family; it is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance. Although a recurring conceptual and archetypal distinction is that of a family farm ...

located in Elba, New York, with a satellite property located in

Potter, New York Potter is a town in Yates County, New York, United States. The Town of Potter is located in the northwest part of the county and is south of Canandaigua. The population was 1,865 at the 2010 census. History Stafford C. Cleveland's ''Histor ...

. It is one of the largest vegetable-crop farm operations in New York. Together its two lots total some 10,000

acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

s, composed primarily of muckland, in the instance drained swampland. The farm grows mainly specialty vegetable crops, such as

sweet corn Sweet corn (''Zea mays'' convar. ''saccharata'' var. ''rugosa''), also called sugar corn and pole corn, is a variety of maize grown for human consumption with a high sugar content. Sweet corn is the result of a naturally occurring recessive muta ...

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the on ...

carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', na ...

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&n ...

, squash,

cucumber Cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated creeping vine plant in the Cucurbitaceae family that bears usually cylindrical fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables.potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...

es, which is generally what is produced on muckland. The main farm in Elba comprises about 8,000 and spans parts of Orleans, Niagara and Genesee counties. The property in Potter, New York, makes up the majority of a valley of muckland that stretches all the way from Potter to

Gorham, New York Gorham is a town in Ontario County, New York, United States. The population was 4,130 at the 2020 census. The town is named after Nathaniel Gorham. The Town of Gorham is at the southern border of the county, southeast of Canandaigua. History ...

along Flint Creek. It was a swamp until it was drained in the 1950s. Not all of the valley is owned by the Torreys. The valley itself was close to being the 12th of the

Finger Lakes The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...

. The muckland in Elba is thought to be the largest continuous section of muckland in the world.

History

In 1626, the Torrey family left England due to disagreement with the church. The family first settled in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the ...

, but later moved West in search of better soil. In 1803, John Torrey arrived in Bethany, New York. In 1948 Elbert Torrey purchased the Higley Farm in Elba. Today, the Torrey family farms over .

Labor

The farm makes use of

migrant workers A migrant worker is a person who migrates within a home country or outside it to pursue work. Migrant workers usually do not have the intention to stay permanently in the country or region in which they work. Migrant workers who work outsi ...

. In October 1997, 25 illegal migrant workers from Torrey Farms were arrested and set to be deported by

Immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, ...

. This was one of the largest immigration raids in New York history and, along with other raids of the time, it caused a significant local labor shortage. Mareen Torrey, owner of Torrey Farms said, "I’m probably going to end up leaving $2 million worth of crop in the field and it’s adding up every day"

Rocket launches

In July 2009, the Tripoli Rocketry Association held the 28th annual LDRS (Large, Dangerous Rocket Ships) rocket launch event at the Potter, New York portion of Torrey Farms; the 31st was held in July 2021; and the 34th in June 2015.LDRS34 Site

References

External links

Official websiteFacebook Page
{{Coord, 43, 5, 0.9, N, 78, 12, 4.5, W, display=title Farms in New York (state) Genesee County, New York 1948 establishments in New York (state)