Today we’d like to introduce you to Chad Milford.
Hi Chad, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Around 1900 Lightner and Josephine West bought the property, built the house and barns and moved here with their family. My grandparents, Robert and Cleo Milford moved to this farm when they got married in 1939. My Grandmother’s father had bought it the year before from the West family as an investment and when his daughter married, he let them move here and they later bought the farm from him. They both lived the rest of their lives here, Grandmother lived here almost 70 years. My father was born in the house in 1941. I bought the farm from Grandmother’s estate in 2010 and began renovations. We hosted our first wedding here in 2012 with porta-pottys and a tent. After that, we began developing the barns into what you see here today. My hope was to host 15 events a year and make enough to restore the out buildings and maintain the property. We now host over 80 events per year. Every year, as we could afford to, we have added improvements: bathrooms, catering kitchen, dining pavilion, brick fireplace, parking lot, sidewalks, ceremony pavilion, large brick and glass greenhouse, and glass roll up garage doors to name a few. We now offer all kinds of events: weddings, birthday parties, anniversary parties, celebration of life events, memorials, sports banquets, corporate parties, proms, graduation parties, quincenieras, and more!
We have an onsite florist who does flowers for nearly all the weddings. We offer six weekly yoga classes to the public with three different teachers. We do Sound immersion events and mindfulness events. Last year we started our Fridays at the Farm Concert series and we are doing that again this year. The concerts are one Friday per month and open to the public. We have all different types of bands and performers. This year we are doing a barnyard bazaar on our concert dates and will have local arts and crafts vendors, a farmers market, and antique vendors selling their wares. We are also planning a Christmas Bazaar weekend the weekend after Thanksgiving. We have just started pottery classes this year and look forward to offering more art classes in the future. We have a therapist who meets her patients here on Mondays and Wednesdays. We have a large garden where I grow tulips in the spring, vegetables and dahlias in the summer and we do a winter garden in the fall. We also have opened the farm up to local photographers to come and photograph their clients here. We have pictures with Santa every year. We also host an annual benefit Easter Egg hunt to benefit local families in need at our Elementary school. That has become a huge part of our business. To say this is a labor of love is an understatement. I feel a deep connection to this place and I know I am doing what I am meant to be doing.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Our biggest struggle, like everyone else’s, was Covid. We were running along just fine and then the brakes got pumped. My entire 2020 season was affected. We took each bride on a per bride basis. I reached out to each one and together, we decided the best course of action for all. Some went ahead and had micro weddings, some postponed over a year, some got married at home and came back later for the receptions. Like most bad things that happen to us in life, if you wait for it, something good will come. We immediately reached out to other venues in the area to see what they were doing. We came up with a plan together and were able to visit each others venues and formed friendships. Our venue was better off than a lot of others because all of our space can be open air. Covid is also what made us decide to do the concerts to help fill our calendar in 2021- little did I know 2021 was going to be the busiest year we ever had. 2023 will be busier. We have also had the normal struggles with growing pains and figuring out what we were doing. We had no experience in this business when we started but we started slow and grew as we felt we could.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I don’t really believe in luck. I believe in hard work. Good things happen and bad things happen. It is all just part of life. How we deal with both the good and the bad will shape our future. Happiness doesn’t just happen to you, you can choose to be happy or choose to be unhappy. Most days, I chose to be happy. I have been blessed but I don’t think it’s luck. There is opportunity everywhere. You just have to grab it and run with it. I’ve had failures in business before and to be honest, I learned more from the failure than the success. Sometimes you have to burn something down to build it back up again. I think I’ve done that with myself more than once.
Pricing:
- Concerts Lawn (bring your own chair) $25
- Concerts VIP Tables for 8 $250
- Yoga Classes are $15 each
- Photography starts at $50 per hour
Contact Info:
- Email: chad@westmilfordfarm.com
- Website: www.westmilfordfarm.com
- Instagram: westmilfordfarm
- Facebook: westmilfordfarm
Image Credits
Larissa Grace Photography, J & C Creative, Brooke Womack
