BBF In The News
Article #1
Dayton Daily News October 9, 2008
Bonnybrook Farm combines history with fun fall activities
BY Justin McClelland
Staff Writer
When city life becomes too complex, people may take a jaunt to the country to relax. But what happens when the country starts to disappear?
Bonnie and Joe Mercuri, who operated Bonnybrook Farm near Centerville for 40 years, ran into just such a problem. Their solution: Pull up the tractors and head out to new farmlands.
“My husband and I both grew up in the city, but I think we always yearned for the country,” Bonnie said. “We had the country in our hearts.”
The Mercuris started Bonnybrook Farms as an equestrian center before adding haunted hayrides in the fall. Eventually the farm blossomed into a full-scale tourist attraction, providing school children and day-trippers with lessons about farm life.
In 2007, however, the Mercuris felt that their Centerville location was becoming too developed. They moved to a new location outside of Clarksville, just across the Warren County line in Washington Twp. “We chose this area for its beauty,” Bonnie said. “It’s an absolutely beautiful farm.”
Bonnie said she was also excited by the history of the area, which includes the old Sheepskin railway that ran through the farm, pioneer ruins and old wagon roads.
This fall the new site will be hosting its first events, including Fall Farm Days, open to the public Saturdays and Sundays in October. The festival will include hayrides, a corn maze, pony rides, a petting zoo, and a farmyard play area. The country store, located in the newly built 6,300-square foot barn, will serve home-cooked food and seasonal snacks and have country decorations for sale.
The new Bonnybrook Farms is over three times the size of the original, growing from 95 acres to 352.
“The size isn’t a big challenge,” Bonnie said. “It’s just things done on a larger scale.”
Bonnie said that farm work can be difficult, but also enjoyable.
“People can come and really enjoy what we do,” Bonnie said. People these days are really missing out on the farm experience and we hope to provide that. It’s not busy, there’s no sirens. It’s a very secluded life.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4544 orjmcclelland@coxohio.com.
Article #2
Dayton Business Journal
September 15, 2006
Owners consider selling Bonnybrook Farms
BY YVONNE TEEMS
DBJ STAFF REPORTER
Bonnybrook Country Farm is considering selling its 95 acres in Washington Township and moving to a 300-acre site in Warren County.
The 40-year-old educational farm, known for its Haunted Hay Rides, field trip programs and corporate events, received an offer and will decide whether or not to sell by next summer, said Bonnie Mercuri, co-owner.
If sold, the land would be developed into a senior independent living facility or high-end residential housing. Terms of the potential deal were not disclosed.
Unlike many farms, which profit from selling their land to developers and give up the farming business for good, Bonnybrook’s agricultural entertainment — or “agri-tainment” — sector is growing.
In fact, the success of these entertain ment ventures makes selling the land more enticing because the owners say they could use more acreage to grow.
Other educational and entertainment farms in the area have grown over the years as well, bolstered by heightened public interest in farming, experts say. But while these programs are fertilized by suburban ites’ curiosity, educational programs have chilled as school districts allot fewer dollars for field trips.
Because Bonnybrook has watched its entertainment services grow, it closed in June its equestrian center, which was the farm’s main focus when it opened in 1966.
At its peak, the center taught 300 students per week, hosted horse shows and traveled to other shows.
Today, the farm has beefed up its enter tainment segment and has a new look. Each fall, the farm is infiltrated with ghosts and ghouls for its Haunted Hayride and Crazed Corn Maze. Last fall, the popular hay ride brought in $80,000 in revenue from 20,000 guests. In addition to the haunted adventures, visitors come to buy pumpkins, eat at the Pumpkin Cafe, listen to storytell ers and warm up next to the bonfires.
Bonnybrook adds 150 workers to its staff for its fall events, Mercuri said. Normally, the farm employs three full-time and 25 part-time employees. Its annual revenue is more than $500,000, Mercuri said.
The farm also hosts more than 20,000 students per year through its educational program, up from 400 to 500 when it began the program in the early 1990s. The field trips make up just 10 percent of its revenue, while most of its income is generated from corporate and fall events, Mercuri said.
Farm managers say agricultural enter tainment is blossoming because people are less exposed to rural settings. Mercuri said that many people visit the farm because they enjoy its beauty, especially when they spend most of their time in city or suburban areas. She said that when children come for field trips, they step off the buses and start sprinting through the fields.
Charity Krueger, executive director of Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm in Dayton, agrees. She said that agricultural entertainment is growing in popular ity because neighborhood farms are sell ing out for developments as the decades pass. A working organic farm, Aullwood has offered educational and entertainment programs since its inception in 1962.
While farms like Bonnybrook and Aullwood try to make up for that, they’re seeing public schools struggle with finding the funds to send their kids on field trips.
Out of the 100 schools Bonnybrook serves each year, eight have dropped out in the past three years, she said. Teachers from out of town have told Mercuri that because of gas prices, their schools have required them to stay close to home to save money. Teachers at local schools, such as Huber Heights, have told Mercuri that because levies have been rejected, funding for extras like field trips is tight.
Some schools are placing greater impor tance on test scores, which limits the amount of time they want students learning outside of the classroom, said Krueger, add ing that Aullwood’s field trip numbers have leveled off in recent years to 20,000 students per year. Aullwood offers events year-round as well as field trip programs on its 350-acre educational and operating organic farm.
To combat the schools’ problems with get ting kids on site, Aullwood created two years ago a program called Aullwood Reaches that sends farm educators to the schools to teach in the classrooms. Last year, the pro gram taught 30,000 children, up from 17,500 in its first year in 2004, Krueger said.
As agricultural entertainment grows, Mercuri notes that Bonnybrook won’t dis appear if it sells its Centerville plot. With a spot in Warren County three times its current size, Bonnybrook would be able to serve more people from both Dayton and Cincinnati, Mercuri said.
E-mail yrteems@bizjournals.com. Call 222-6900, ext. 127.
Article #3
Dayton Daily News
Monday, October 11, 2004
Families love Bonnybrook farm
They giggle, they shout. “I’m doing it again!” or brag, “I did it head-first!”
More than 2,000 visitors came to Bonnybrook Country Farm on Sunday for hay rides, pony rides, a petting barn and other family-friendly attractions.
The mothers who waited at the end of the Crazed Corn Maze at the farm heard cheering, too, but for different reasons.
A woman walked out, pump ing her arms in the air, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
One of their daughters ran out, saying, “Finally!”
But happiest of all was dad, whose maniacal shouting could be heard a few moments before the kids ran out.
“They were coming around the comer,” he said, and he heard one say, “‘I wish there was somebody who would just jump out at you.’ The timing couldn’t have been better!”
Why were they so relieved to be out?
Listen in as Karen and Brianna Wise go through, with their grandfather, Greg Wise, and cousins, Jason and Teddy Benge.
Karen cried, “Jason, you led us to a dead end!”
Then, back on track, they go through spongy “quicksand,” and Brianna bounces up and down.
Karen lost sight of some of the group. “Grandpa!”
Pressurized air blows on them with a loud whoosh, and one of the grandsons cried, “This is scary!”
Before long, they get separated, and Karen and Brianna are alone. They get closer to a beating-drum sound, then it fades behind them.
“Where’s grandpa?” Karen asked, sounding a little panicky. “We are totally lost.OK?”
But then she comes to a clue about scarecrows, and said, “Navahos! I actually know this!”
The clue asked if Navahos used a ragdoll, a teddy bear or a carved owl.
“A ragdoll? No. A teddy bear — no. lt was a carved owl,” Karen said.
When they meet up again out side, all the kids — who are be tween 11 and 13 — are saying how much they loved it.
Karen reluctantly admitted she was scared — “just a little.”
Owner Bonnie Mercuri said sunny warm days like Sunday make all the difference for her business. When the weather’s that good, she easily has two to three times as many customers.
“The weather has been remark able,” she said. “We haven’t had a fall like this for 10 years.”
Bonnybrook Farm, 9400 Clyo Road, will be open each week end from noon to 5 p.m. through the end of October. Admission is $6.50; children 3 and younger are free.
Contact Mara Lee at 225-2420.
Article #4
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sunday, September 26, 1999
‘Pumpkin person’ grows ’em different
BY CHUCK MARTIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
At Bonnybrook Country Farm in Centerville, all pumpkins are not round and orange.
Owner Bonnie Mercuri grows squatty, gray-green hokkaido pump kins, tannish-orange cow pumpkins, gray melon-shaped Hopi pumpkins and more than 30 other heirloom and exotic varieties.
“I’m just a pumpkin person, I guess,” Ms. Mercuri says. “I can’t explain it.”
But she has been raising horses 32 years — much longer than pumpkins. Bonnybrook is a work ing 87-acre horse farm, offering rides, draft horse demonstrations, stable tours and a petting barn. With the help of friends, Ms. Mer curi started growing the weird pumpkins three years ago.
She likes to put them on display in her farm market, to show tours of school children and adults that pumpkins come in different shapes, sizes and colors.
With the help of another friend, Diana Alspaugh, Ms. Mercuri has discovered her odd pumpkins also taste good. Executive chef at Sinclair Community College Conference Center in Dayton, Ms. Alspaugh has made pie with the gray Australian jarrahdale pumpkin, cookies with whangaparoa and vegetable stew with roasted Hokkaido.
Not only are the pumpkins versatile in recipes, she says, but they’re easy to cook as well. Like she does other winter squash, she cuts pumpkins in half and removes the seeds before steaming and pureeing the flesh. She peels and chunks pumpkin before roasting or stewing.
“I’ve been into cooking and eating different kinds of pumpkin for at least six years,” Ms. Alspaugh says. And like Ms. Mercuri, she has trouble explaining why she’s a pumpkin person.
Article #5
Dayton Daily News
Monday, October 3, 1994
Haywire Hayride
Spooky farms get set for Halloween scares
By Jim Bebbington
DAYTON DAILY NEWS
After eight years of success in the cottage industry of scaring the heck out of people, the oper ators of Bonnybrook Farms’ haunted hayride this year faced a tough question.
How do you top a glowing green dinosaur and fake Medi eval castle?
The dinosaur and castle were part of last year’s scares at the Washington Twp. farm. Every year the owners try to build or bring something new to the operation for Halloween.
The solution was, appropri ately enough, a ghost town. The Haunted Hayride is one of dozens of spooky farms and haunted houses that go into full swing this week.
And Skeleton Creek is Bonnybrook Farms’ largest effort to date. The ghost town has 11 store fronts and is in the most remote part of the Bonnybrook hayride. Slamming doors, ener getic butchers and roaring trains all make their appearance.
The haunted hayride opened Friday, and the ghost town is becoming more lived-in as this year’s Halloween season contin ues. “You can still smell the fresh paint,” said Bonnie Mercuri, the hayride operator.
The tale of the haunted hayride begins with Mercuri, who owns and operates the horse farm with her husband, Joe.
They began the haunted hayride on their 86 acres very “primitive ly.” A cackling witch with a kettle here, and someone in a scary mask hiding behind the tree there.
“I am a real nature person and I wasn’t sure I wanted all this stuff here,” Mercuri said, walking through the heavily wooded area filled with masks, skeletons and assorted gruesomeness.
But she found she enjoyed help ing people get scared. “It’s fairly simple,” she said. “It’s the element of surprise… and sounds. Different sounds are good.”
Over the years the number of screams, train whistles and hid eously costumed actors have in creased. Mercuri and her husband used to play the parts of headless horsemen, riding their largest horses quietly up to the carriages and letting the riders discover them at their leisure.
“You see them jump from one side of the wagon to the other,” Mercuri said. “We’re trying to get equal scares for each side.”
Over the next few weeks, Mercuri’s hayride will be only one of dozens, of haunted activities of the season.
At The Castle, nearby in Centerville, organizers are finishing up their Not So Haunted House. It opens Oct. 14 to raise money for the social and activity center for mentally and emotionally disabled adults. Their event is designed more for younger children and families.
“What we would do last year is ask the kids, ‘Do you want to be scared?’” said Anubis Reeder, the day manager of The Castle. “If they said no, we’d yell ‘OK, tone it down in there.’”
Mercuri, walking past the ghoulishness on her farm on a bright, clear Sunday afternoon, said the outdoor work is always rewarding for a nature lover.
But, going into her ninth year of scaring people as a hobby, Mercuri has grown to appreciate other forms of beauty. Walking from the sunshine into a dark, shrouded tunnel of black plastic, she motioned to a bluish giant skull on the wall with one blood-shot eye larger than the other. “I like this one,” she said.”
Article #6
Dayton Daily News
About Town
By Dale Huffman
It’s corny, but hitch not scary
THE GROOM WAS speechless.
And with all due respect the bride had this look about her that could scare birds in a corn field.
But they still got hitched. It was a fun-loving down-on-the-farm mock wedding between scarecrows Tyrone Cobb Stalks III and his lovely mate, Cornelia Haward.
Bonnie Mercuri, the “mother of the bride” and owner of Bonnybrook Farms cooked up the scarecrow wedding to help kick off the annual Fall Farm Days, which run on weekends through October.
During the Saturday ceremony the make- believe minister, Joe Shindell, repeated these words from Cobb to Cornelia: “You make me the best scarecrow I could be. You laugh at my corny jokes. And when I slump you are right there to support me.”
And the bride wrote to the groom: “Tyrone, even though I look scary in the morning, you always tell me -how great I look. When I shop for second-hand clothes you always like what I pick out. You’ve made me the happiest scarecrow in the cornfield.”
The newlyweds will honeymoon at Bonnybrook Farms, 9400 Clyo Road, during the festival. There are pony rides, a petting barn, demonstrations, entertainment and hayrides. With each $6 admission you get a free pumpkin to decorate.
And in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Cobb Stalks there will be scarecrow building demonstrations and scarecrow games for the kids. For additional information call 433-6393.
