‘It’s about building community out here’

Highland Realm Farm a hidden gem offering berries, education

Jay Powell

Columbia Daily Herald | USA TODAY NETWORK – TENN.

Excerpt from November 2, 2022, The Tennessean newspaper p. A11

While tourism and growth continue to dominate Maury County’s major cities, discovering its hidden gems among the rural landscape is also a major draw for visitors.

This is especially true when visitors and locals can bring home fresh, organic products produced by local Maury County farmers. However, there’s a lot more to discover than a simple bushel of berries, but a whole farming community that hopes to continue its own form of growth and educating the community.

Located just off Hampshire Pike in rural Hampshire, Highland Realm Farm has been a popular spot for more than a decade, inviting visitors each summer to pick fresh blueberries, camp and learn about farming. The lush farm even now now offers a cabin for rent

on the Airbnb market.

Having purchased the land in the mid-1970s, owner Deanna Maddy, a former professor of health at Columbia State Community College, began to focus on farming full-time after retirement in 1999. She began to learn the skills and knowledge related to things like using the right soil, how to grow her plants organically and, most importantly, the ability to maintain a thriving crop.

“I just woke up one day and said, ‘I’ve got to take better care of the farm,’” Naddy said. “I learned a little bit about what the soil should be like, and what chemical fertilizers do to the soil, if it makes the roots grow shallow.”

Over the last 12 years, Highland Realm has specialized in mostly blueberries, as well as a few blackberries, with approximately 2,800 plantings which are harvested each summer primarily during the June-July period. After about three years of trial and error, dealing with things like Japanese beetles and other damaging elements, Naddy discovered the secret to a good crop is in thermal composting.