PLAINFIELD — A year after Paul and Nancy Franklin bought an old, vacant 30-acre farm along the Connecticut River in 1980, they planted their first apple trees.
In the years to come blueberry and raspberry bushes, pumpkins and a variety of flower annuals, joined strawberry plants that were there when the Franklins bought the farm. Those crops helped add to the business’ offerings.
Today, Riverview Farm has 2,200 apple trees growing 15 varieties and has become a favorite outing in late summer and fall for pick-your-own fruit, fresh cut flowers and finding one’s way in a corn maze.
While the Franklins, who graduated from the University of New Hampshire in the mid-1970s, were busy expanding and tending to their farm duties — while also raising their three children — they never gave much thought to retirement. In the early years, it seemed a long way off.
“You perhaps don’t think about the future much when you are in your 30s and 40s,” Paul said. “But now, the future is here.”
Franklin said he and his wife were in a situation similar to that of many fruit growers in New Hampshire and Vermont. Some have a younger generation to step in but many don’t.
“A lot get to the point where we are, in their 60s and 70s, but there is no one in the family who wants to take over,” Franklin, 73, said, adding that his children were not interested, though his daughter Amy does help out on the farm. “We wanted to retire but how do you do that? It is a real struggle.”
Franklin said one option for Riverview, which did not interest him nor Nancy, 71, was to “close up shop, forget about all the people we have served and put it on the market and whatever it brings.”
“Hardly anybody (farmer) wants to do that,” he said. “We are going to transfer the farm to Clay and Carma (Franklin). There is value to us because we see it continue with family members and the people that have enjoyed it will continue to enjoy it.”
The transition to a new generation of younger owners began in the winter of 2025 when Paul and Nancy visited Paul’s brother, his nephew, Clay, and Clay’s wife Carma, in Spencer, Ohio.
“He (Paul) casually asked if we would be interested in the farm if it became available and I responded ‘yes’,” Clay Franklin said during an interview via zoom with Paul and Nancy in their farmhouse at Riverview.
Clayton has been serving in the Coast Guard and his next assignment will be in Boston this summer. He plans to make trips to Plainfield when able. In two years, he will retire after 24 years in the Guard and begin to work the farm full time.
After their initial conversation in January 2025, discussions over the next several months led to several “iterations” of the transition before a final agreement was reached, Paul and Clay said. Besides running the farm, the couple will move into the farmhouse and Paul and Nancy will build a new home on adjacent property that they hope to have finished in August.
“That seemed to be the best way,” Paul said, noting the high price of homes on the market.
The Franklins declined to discuss the sale price or the agreement’s details.
Born in Hanover, Clayton lived briefly in Thetford before his family moved out of the area when he was a child. He is looking forward to coming back.
“I feel excitement,” Clayton, 43, said. “It’s a nice way to end one chapter (of my life) and begin the next. We want to honor what Paul and Nancy have built here and to continue that. That is present in our minds to give a nod to them for what they have done and continue it on in the community.”
Carma, who grew up on a farm in Ohio, has similar feelings.
“I’m in the same realm as Clay. It is exciting to start a new chapter in our lives and not have to move every three years (with the Coast Guard),” Carma, 45, said. “It has been my aspiration to get back into agriculture and this way of life.”
The agreement to sell the farm was aided with considerable help from two local institutions, the Franklins said. They received invaluable advice on how to structure the transition from Seth Wilner, Farm Business Management Educator at the UNH Cooperative Extension. Also helping with tax planning was Farm Credit East, a nationwide cooperative of farmers that provides competitive financing for U.S. farmers and other financial related services.
“I’ve always been involved with farm credit,” Paul said. “I’ve borrowed from them and they do our taxes and they do consulting work. So I am comfortable with people that work there. Their advice is as good as any tax attorney can give you. And the extension service, there are good people there.
“It is very good teamwork,” Paul said. “The extension service is education, Farm Credit is financial but they work together.”
Clay agreed that the assistant from UNH extension gave him and his wife confidence to handle the challenges of running a fruit farm.
“The UNH extension service has been phenomenal,” Clayton said.
Paul said the NH Fruitgrowers Association is more “collegial than competitive. They (Clay and Carma) will be stepping into that.”
In a phone interview, Wilner said there are a lot of complexities to transitioning ownership of a farm and his job is to help the parties navigate through the process, like a “conductor of an orchestra.”
Wilner said there is a “tax lane” with major implications, farm transfer and succession planning for the next generation, retirement planning for the generation that is leaving, a “legal lane” for the business structure and family issues, especially when assets are not being divided equally.
“I help folks conduct the orchestra, identify their plans, their goals and work through things,” said Wilner who has been with the cooperative extension for 26 years. “I can connect them with people to value their land, the business, and equipment valuation.”
When meeting with farmers, Wilner said he avoids overwhelming them with arcane terminology like “recaptured depreciation” and things they don’t need to know and instead gives them questions to ask.
“So I either empower them with questions or I join them in meeting with accountants, lawyers and others,” Wilner said, adding that the farmers have to decide what they need and what they are comfortable with.
Mike Moloney is a senior tax specialist in the White River Junction office of Farm Credit.
“Our practice does a fair amount of this type of consulting,” Moloney said about working with the Franklins. “We just looked, in the case of Paul and Nancy, at various tax implications and different ways to structure the deal and came up with a scenario that worked well for both parties.”
Paul said Clay and Carma will bring important intangibles to Riverview.
“You can teach anyone when to spray (fruit), but what they bring is a strong work ethic,” Paul said. “When people would ask us how is it (the sale) going I would tell them we are working with a very ethical couple. And you build from there.”
The official sale won’t happen until Jan. 1, 2027. Paul said the reason is because most expenses occur in the first nine months of the year and the most of the income is earned in the last three months. But Clay and Carma will be eager to start learning and working the farm when they arrive.
“We know how to grow things but not to that scale,” Clay said. “They (Paul and Nancy) have been gracious and will help us learn the skills and to make jams and jellies. As of now, I feel comfortable with what we know but also understand we don’t know everything and are willing to learn.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
