Critz Farms is known across Central New York as a premier place to visit to get apples, pumpkins, maple cider and Christmas trees — not to mention the animals to see and pet, the playground for the kids and the food to eat — but what most people may not know is that 2015 is the 30th year of business in Cazenovia for Matt and Juanita Critz.
And after 30 years in business the Critzes have no intention to slow down — they have announced that by spring 2016 they plan to start brewing their own beer and selling it under the company name of Critz Farms Brewing and Cider Company.
“I never envisioned we would be here now from where we started,” said Matt. “We’re so happy with our choice of Cazenovia — it’s a wonderful place to live and is so supportive of agriculture.”
Juanita agreed. “We’re really proud of what we built here. It makes us feel good to provide opportunities for people to come and have a great time. We get a lot of positive feedback from our customers, and that’s very rewarding.”
The Critzes moved to Cazenovia in 1985 and started their business with a Christmas tree farm on what was then an abandoned dairy farm on Rippleton Road. “The house was here, the front part of what is now the café was here and the big barn — but that’s all that was here,” Matt said. “It was 20 years since the last farmer was here.”
After four or five years of selling their own trees, as well as imported trees, Critz Farms had grown to include the parking lot and the cafe. “One of my customers said, ‘Matt you gotta get into the pumpkin business,’ so we started with a two-acre patch and a tractor ride; that’s it,” Matt said.
Through the years, the Critzes discovered that their visitors would stay and “hang out” on the farm after they had picked their pumpkins or their Christmas trees, so they decided to add more animals and a petting zoo, then the playground, a corn maze, a maple sugar house and seasonal festivals. “Suddenly, there were two or three thousand people here on Saturdays,” Matt said.
Eventually, the Critzes segued into the apple business due to customer demand, and from the very first day they made their own sweet cider. But their customers kept asking when they were going to start making hard cider, so, four years ago, the Critzes opened the Harvest Moon Cidery and became purveyors of hard cider.
“Our motto has always been to listen to our customers,” Matt said. “We always try new things.”
And so far, the cidery has been extremely successful, with nine different yearly ciders now available (and five seasonal), more than two dozen awards won and sales availability extending to stores and restaurants across New York state. Annual production has increased by 10,000 gallons — to the point where the Critzes had to enlarge their cider storage building two years ago.
“We became well known as a pumpkin farm, but we felt for years that this was great place for people of all ages and interests, and by opening the winery we were able to prove it to people,” Juanita said. “It helped us to broaden our audience and provide more things for more different visitors.”
Harvest Moon has recently released for the season — for the first time in bottles — its Double Vision seasonal cider that combines 80 percent hard cider with 20 percent sweet cider, so it is “double appley” Matt said. They also just concluded collecting wild apples from community members and will make from those a “Cazenovia Community Cider” that will release in May 2016.
“Sometimes I feel, ‘How did I get here? How did this happen?’” said Matt. “There was no master plan that got us here.”
As the future unfolds, Critz Farms will continue to adapt and change its business and farm offerings, Juanita said. They have already started planting new crops in their fields such as barley and hops, and they brought back strawberries, which they have not planted for years, she said. But the big news for Critz is that they have applied for, and received, a farm brewery license from New York state — meaning that once they receive their federal permit, Critz Farms will begin brewing its own beer.
“People love beer. People don’t understand cider,” Juanita said when asked why they are expanding into beer brewing. “We’ve worked hard to educate people on cider. There’s an existing cider audience, and then there are people you need to really educate, but everybody understands and really loves beer. So it was a good thing to add to our choices in the tasting room. It makes sense to us because we grow our own crops. It just seemed a natural fit.”
The Critzes said they have everything ready and in place to begin brewing beer — including a brewer who has been working with them for the past year — they are just waiting for the federal “red tape” to clear. They have a two-and-a-half-barrel brew system in place and have a “lofty” goal of making 100 to 200 barrels per year to start, they said.
“We’ll see how it goes … [but] we fully expect to be selling beer by the spring if not before,” Juanita said. “We’re really excited about that.”
After 30 years in business, Critz Farms shows no evidence of slowing down any time soon. As Juanita said, growth “just seems to be in our nature.”
Critz Farms is located at 3232 Rippleton Road in Cazenovia. For more information, visit critzfarms.com or call 662-3355.
