Established 1806 “I currently live in the original house, which was built back in 1806. In the beginning the farm was your typical mixed-commodity farm, having a little bit of everything.”

“We started to specialize back in the 1860s. My great-grandfather specialized in potatoes. At one point in time, he was growing 30 acres of potatoes, which is not very much by today’s standards, but if you think about it, he ploughed with a one furrow plough, meaning he would have walked 300 miles.”

“He planted our first apple orchard in 1875. We still have one of the original trees producing here on the farm. On his deathbed, he told my father, “You look after the orchard and it’ll look after you.” That was very true here in Eastern Canada.”

“That brought us up into the 1950s. My father had a small dairy herd, as well as the orchard, and he started to move into chickens. Originally, they were dual-purpose, meat and eggs. Then he went into commercial egg production, in 1967, with another barn following in 1970.”

“In 1978 following many years of research, Burris Coburn fulfilled one of his lifelong dreams by opening Coburn’s Garden Patch, a year-round farm market. This evolved to include New Brunswick’s first year-round Christmas centre. Coburn’s Garden Patch enjoyed a run of 20 years until 1998 when the Trans Canada highway moved.”

“In 1979 following the opening of the Garden Patch there was an opportunity to grow bedding plants for the garden centre. The first greenhouse (2000 sq ft) was built producing vegetable transplants and vegetable bedding plants.”

“In 1980 a second (3000 sq ft) greenhouse was built. We eventually expanded to producing 2000 flats of flower and vegetable transplants for the market. This production went on until 1995 when the bedding plant marketing board was disbanded. This meant?(was met) bedding plants were dumped into Atlantic Canada from central Canada making it unprofitable for small bedding plant producers. After we lost that market we evolved into exotic colours (Red, Orange, Yellow, White, Black, Chocolate as well as three different kinds of Hot peppers.”

“In 1983 we were approached by the Department of Agriculture to put up a 30 foot by 80 foot cold frame (unheated) greenhouse for vegetable production. In 1984 we added two more. Different crops were tried but Greenhouse Peppers were the crop that worked best. We produced Red Bell Peppers for several years supplying the Save Easy stores in Fredericton.”

“In 1993 with the addition of our Composter we were able to use compost and compost tea in our pepper houses. Thus we were able to produce Organic Peppers . This production continued until 2005 when a couple of wind storms destroyed the greenhouses.”

“I came back to the farm in 1981. In 1986, we built a new lay barn, bringing both flocks into one barn, and we managed 25,000 birds for the next 30 years. We moved into composting our farm waste. The compost is used on the farm primarily in the orchard or sold in bulk to customers and other farmers. We have downsized our apple orchard; we went from 100 acres down to 10. We run a processing orchard and, with that, turning the apples into apple cider and apple syrups.”

1995 – David & Karen Coburn were the Outstanding Young Farmers for Atlantic Canada.

“Due to a major hail storm this year – the entire apple crop was destroyed, this led to the removal, the following year, of 90 acres of apple trees, leaving us with the 10 acre production orchard we have today.”

“In 1995, we built our own feed mill, started manufacturing our feed and just continued to specialize that way. It’s been an exciting, exciting ride.”

“1n 2000 we purchased our cousin’s, Donald Coburn, farm, which is beside our property and was part of the original property and had been split in the 1850’s.”

“In 2006 we celebrated the Bicentennial of Coburn Farms and created our Farm Museum.”

“In 2007 we became pro rata owners of Maritime Pride.”

“In 2010 fire destroyed our apple house, which led to a major overhaul of our cider plant in 2011.”

“In 2014 the compost barn collapsed and a new tarp structure was erected for our finished compost.”

“In 2016 beef cattle were added to our farm.”

“in 2017 we created our first Apple Syrup.”

“In 2018 we built our fully enriched poultry layer barn.”

“In 2019 the old Hen House was destroyed due to the roof collapsing under snow load, we are now using this space to cook our compost.”

“In 2020 as a result of Covid-19 we opened up a self-serve Farm Store in the porch of our office selling our eggs, cider and syrups.”