Mark your calendars for this Saturday, Oct. 25: Dixon Family Farm in St. Mary’s County is hosting its first-ever Pumpkin Festival. This all-ages event will run from noon to 5 p.m. at 27075 S. Sandgates Road, Mechanicsville, MD 20659. Dr. Jeff Miller, a direct descendant of the Dixon family, and his wife, Claudinne, have owned and operated Dixon Family Farm since 2019, but this is the first year they’ve organized this kind of autumn event. “We really wanted to put on something for all ages,” Dr. Miller said. “For the kids, we’ll have a pumpkin patch and hayrides, and for adults we’ll have a pumpkin cannon and axe throwing.”The farm is set to be loaded with vendors and attractions of all kinds. Children’s entertainment will include face painting, juggling and magic by Crickett the Clown, a bounce house, and a trick-or-treat trail. The Dixon Family Farm Shop will be open during the event, along with a local artisan market, food trucks, educational talks about farming practices, a cocktail tent, and live music by The Knuckle Dusters. Mariia, Jeff and Claudinne’s daughter-in-law and a professional tattoo artist, will be offering flash tattoos.
“We’ll have a lot of vendors there. We want to share with everybody. It’s looking like it’ll be a nice, crisp fall day,” Dr. Miller said. “There’ll be food trucks there too. Another family member owns Miss Beth’s Cakes, and she’ll be there.”
Besides bringing the community together, the Millers hope that the income from the Pumpkin Festival can help bridge the gap between their popular Lavender Days event in June and Christmas Market in December.
Dixon Family Farm is a Maryland Century Farm. Colonists first started growing tobacco on the land in the 1600s. The Dixon Family Farm was formally established in 1881. A number of archaeological finds have been made on the Millers’ property spanning the centuries that their farm has been in operation. “The chimney on the house is original, from the 1600s,” Dr. Miller said. “A few years back, some historians from the college [St. Mary’s College of Maryland] found five crypts nearby, all in the front yard. On top of the hill they found ammunition from militia, so we think there was a skirmish here during the War of 1812. Some metal detector guys have found uniform buttons, game pieces and bullets with bite marks. We think there might have been a field hospital here because they used to give wounded soldiers bullets to bite to help manage their pain. The college folks could tell from the nails that the house was rebuilt in 1820, so it probably got burned down in the war.”
Dr. Miller said this Saturday’s Pumpkin Festival will be the last big public event at Dixon Family Farm for a while.
“That’ll be it for us for the fall. We have some other events coming up. Those are on the website. In mid-June, we have Lavender Days. Those are always a big success. We’re due for good weather: it’s usually either too hot or rainy.” When Dixon Family Farm isn’t hosting events like the Pumpkin Festival, the Millers keep busy with the day-to-day work of running a farm.
“Every day we feed the chickens, and the sheep and goats,” Dr. Miller said. “They’re our weed control and make our fertilizer. Lately we’ve been planting winter cover, reseeding grass and clearing the edges of the field. We’ve also been collecting firewood, and we’re cultivating a couple of persimmon and juniper trees. There’s a distillery that wants to use only Maryland botanicals, so those juniper berries will be for them.” “We’ll be planting some of our flowers as early as February,” he said. “We’ve got 21 rows of flowers, which we sell all kinds of ways. We supply a few local florists. Sometimes wedding planners will come up and pick some for their weddings. We also dry some of them, which is nice because then we can sell them all year long. We have a few big festivals a year. We spend a lot of time mowing, shoveling manure and composting. A lot of our neighbors are family who have their own farms, so we all help each other out here and there. If somebody has hay, everybody comes together for that, since that’s a lot of work.”
That spirit of community is at the heart of the Millers’ operation of Dixon Family Farm. When asked if he had anything to say directly to readers, Dr. Miller said, “We’d like people to come out and enjoy Maryland.”
You can purchase tickets for the festival here. Check out the Dixon Family Farm Instagram and Facebook for more information.