Usher Farm remains a strong, family business 37 years after it was founded

by Dan McClelland

Usher Farm on Underwood Road, the homegrown business that has provided Tupper Lake residents and visitors with top quality plants and vegetables and expert growing advice for over three decades has changed hands. -But it’s still all in the family!

The ownership of the popular greenhouse business transferred last year from Lidia Kriwox to her daughter, Emily- and this is Emily’s first full year in charge.

But Lidia, the lady who founded the business nearly four decades ago with her late husband, Steve, and grew it to its present size, is still very much involved, helping her daughter every way she can.

Lidia has been pondering retirement in recent years, but full retirement for her is still a long ways off, judging by her continued operation in the new operation.

Lidia and Steve Kriwox founded Usher Farm in 1988, the year after they purchased the 20-acre parcel and farmhouse on Underwood Road. Years before that the tract was known as the Berard Farm, last operated by Mr. and Mrs. Ray Berard, who later moved to Sunset Ave.

It was just one of a number of farms on Underwood Road in the early years of this community, and when the couple bought it, it came with a barn and cattle stanchions.

Lidia grew up north of Niagara Falls and Steve hailed from the Lowville area. They were introduced to this area in the 1970s when they were hired as caretakers for the Nomis Club. They worked there for nine years.

Their tenure ended when the club land was sold to the state.

“The first year we were here I sold $400 worth of plants from a picnic table in our driveway,” Lidia remembered.

“This was my dream...I also wanted a greenhouse to grow things.” The greenhouses have grown in numbers over the years as the business grew.

The couple had five children, all born here, and from the time they were little they all pitched in to help their parents grow great things at the farm business.

Did the kids like their many chores growing up? we asked her one recent sunny morning last month.

“Let me put it this way: ‘two of my kids entered the military right after high school. They didn’t want to water plants anymore!’” she laughed.

The new owner, Emily, like her siblings worked alongside her parents all during her childhood and through high school and college. Emily taught school after receiving her education degree, but for now she’s put that aside to devote all her attention to her new business.

We toured the property with Emily and her mother, and with baby Lidia, strapped to Emily’s back. She appeared quite content to be there.

Baby Lidia’s name is spelled the same way as her grandmother. The unique spelling comes from the elder Lidia’s mom, who was born in Italy and that’s how the name is spelled there because there is no letter “y” in the Italian alphabet.

Lidia joked about another unusual twist of names in the family that came about when Steve Kriwox’s father emigrated from Russia to America, the mill clerk took his complicated 12-letter Russian name, abbreviated it to five letters and added an “x”- creating Kriwox.

Every year Lidia continued to invest in the family business- with capital and toil to each year grow it a little more. It’s multi-acre landscape of colorful plants, vegetables, shrubs and small trees- inside and outside of the greenhouses there was most impressive during our visit.

There have been set backs too. Last winter, for example, heavy snow collapsed their first greenhouse- a metal structure Lidia and Steve built behind where a modern main building and retail area now stands.

The space where the first greenhouse stood is now a lush outdoor garden of many different kinds of plants.

The development of the garden behind the retail headquarters has been Emily’s doing this season, since the old greenhouse fell.

All their greenhouses are covered with heavy plastic, UV-treated to prevent the material’s natural degradation. Accordingly, the plastic can last a number of seasons- and sometimes as many as seven years.

For a lady who grew up tending the plants and vegetables in her parents’ business Emily said buying the business from her mom seemed like the right move. “I’ve always loved the work. I love working with her,” she said pointing at her mother.

We asked Lidia if Emily was the most enthusiastic of all her children about the business.

Lidia didn’t directly answer that, but said when Emily was teaching she would come down here at 5:30a.m. each morning and work until 7a.m. and then go home to change and clean up and go to school...just because she wanted to help me.” She routinely returned after school to the farm business.

Emily holds an elementary education degree and her master’s in education degree is in literacy education.

“Mom always told me that if you want to go into this business, you can, but first go get a trade or profession, in case it works out that business is not for you!” Emily said she feels in her heart that it will be.

Emily’s two children are with her at Usher Farm like she was- her seventh month old baby at this point strapped to her back and her two and half year old toddler, Liam or L.J., playing about. Baby Lidia smiled brightly from her back seat during our hour-long visit to the popular place. Our interview was late morning, before the rush of the afternoon crowd.

Emily smiled when she said people often tell her, pointing to her kids, ‘I remember you when you were their age!’”

Lidia said the farmhouse where they raised their family was demolished a number of years ago. In its place now is the new retail building with a second-floor apartment where she now lives.

One of the greenhouses added in recent years sits on the footprint of the old house.

Each of the half dozen greenhouses at Usher Farm is named after a local mountain, Emily noted, mentioning that initially they were numbered.

Each new greenhouse is a major investment in the business. Each new one features a modern, automatic water system which eliminates hundreds of hours of manually watering each season. “Aqua mats” and “drip lines” run throughout each greenhouse, as part of those automated systems.

The plants growing in those new greenhouses draw water up into the containers from the bottom to induce good root growth.

“The more we can automate, the less work it is for us,” the ladies both agree.

Emily noted that there is only one of the original wood-framed greenhouses that her dad built left and that will be replaced soon.

The watering systems are both automatic and manual. They joke that sometimes the timers “are in our brains.”

The business is open six days a week, noon to 6p.m., closed on Sundays.

“We need the mornings to water,” the ladies both noted.

At the northern side of the property Lidia and Steve dug a pond, which now sports a fountain. A variety of young trees now line its banks.

“We wanted a place for the kids to skate,” Lidia remembered. It was obviously a good move as many of the Kriwox kids became good hockey players, including the girls.

Over the years the shallow pond grew in, and with help from the kids, Lidia was able to reclaim it, and add the fountain.

Lidia noted that help always comes from her kids in big portions when there is a project at hand.

Two of the greenhouses at the farm are for what Lidia and Emily call “private plantings” and where they fill orders each year to grow specific plants for certain customers. In some cases the customers drop off their planter boxes and the staff at Usher Farm fills them with plants.

One of those houses is where shade-loving plants are grown and the other for plants that tolerate a lot of sun.

Those two are not open to the general public.

Usher Farm also has a planting service where the plants it raises and sells are planted in local flower beds and gardens. For those assignments, it’s commonplace to rally the help of the Kriwox siblings, if they are in town.

Lidia’s children include Colin, who lives in Vermont, Jesse in Tennesee, Rachel, a nurse at Sunmount and Neil, who also works at Sunmount. “I’m proud of them all,” Lidia said of them all.

“-And this is my kindred spirit,” the very proud mother said pointing at Emily. “She is doing very well here and I’m very proud of her!”

The 31 year old Emily admitted that taking over the business and seeing some of the large invoices it faces each season has been a bit daunting. She says her new adventure in business has been made a little more comfortable with her very experienced mother right there every day.

Among the many things growing on the business grounds is a mother Mallard and her nest. She has apparently become quite accustomed to the foot traffic on the paths around the gardens, just feet from her nest.

“I love this little duck. I’m so glad she stayed with us,” said a grinning Emily.

Emily and her husband, Liam Ward, have many plans for the place that has been Emily’s home since she was born.

Among those plans are more greenhouses built in the years ahead, and from those new places and the ones already dotting the grounds will spring more of the colorful and varied plants that Usher Farm has grown a solid reputation for growing. For nearly four decades it’s been part of the family-owned business’ mission to color and beautify the flower beds and gardens of the residences and seasonal properties of the greater Tupper Lake area. It’s a tradition that will most certainly continue under the direction of its second generation owner- Emily Kriwox Ward.

-And she’s hoping that when it’s time for her to retire, maybe baby Lidia or Liam, will keep it as a family business.