The air is growing increasingly warm as young Albert Judd makes his way south of Maine’s early summer foliage to his Uncle Morris’ dairy farm in New Hampshire. Over the radio, there is talk of President Kennedy’s recent expansions of the U.S. space program. He thinks to himself, “ Maybe I could do something with that, I’m pretty good with numbers.” As he moves on, he thinks about this coming season, about the crops and the cows. He wonders if he’ll see any of his other relatives at the farm, chances are good, as there are quite a few of them. But among all these thoughts and ideas, he may have never supposed that many years from now, he would be sitting under the comfortably shaded area of his very own Ordway Grove Farm. Being interviewed while the light breeze of an approaching thunderstorm carries his notions of gardening, mathematics and traveling with a sense of crackling energy and building enthusiasm.

Q: Tell me about your schooling?

A: I was born in South Paris. At five years old, I moved to Norway with my mother and father and went to the one-room school house on Maine Street in Norway — kindergarten through third grade. At that time, my parents moved to Connecticut and I finished my schooling in Connecticut. Graduated from Manchester High School and Central Connecticut State College … I was a math major.

Q: What do you like about math?

A: It came easy to me. At the time, when I graduated from high school in 1962, Kennedy had started the space program to go to the moon. So, degrees were in great demand in mathematics, physics, engineering, and we more or less got caught up with that wave of science and technology. And I liked it.

Q: If you were a geometric shape, which shape do you think you would be?

A: A star.

Q: What is your work history like?

A: When I graduated from college with a math degree, I went into what was called, at the time, data processing. My first job was at Combustion Engineering in the engineering department doing graphical Fortran programming. I did that for about three years and then I went to the business side of data processing, because the demand was so high and there were lots of opportunities. From their I developed a full career in what became know as Information Technology: IT. I had a 40 year career in IT. 40 years! 40 years and 40 nights!

Q: Tell me about your family.

A: My farther, Albert Judd, was born in South Paris, in a farm on the East Oxford Road. My grandmother and grandfather had a large farm there and grew apples and vegetable and they were truck farmers. They had five children, three daughters and two sons, all born in South Paris. Great family, I had aunts and uncles, and numerous cousins and they’re the greatest part of my family.

Q: Why do you garden?

A: It’s a passion. I’ve always had a produce garden through my life, just for myself. And then, when I retired four years ago, I started a produce business, because it is a passion to me —  organic produce, growing heritage vegetables, meaning the old varieties that have the best flavors that are lost due to hybrids. Organic gardening because it’s the best flavors.

Q: Where did you learn to garden?

A: I had an uncle, Uncle Morris Judd and he graduated from the University of Maine Agricultural School and he was a farmer in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s. I spent summers in New Hampshire with him and he taught me how to grow things. He was also a dairy farmer.

Q: As a gardener, what position do you sleep in at night?

A: Well, I don’t sleep like a carrot. I sleep on my side with my right arm over the pillows and that’s the way I sleep.

Q: Did anything strange or paranormal ever happen to you?

A: Yes. When my mother died about … maybe a month after she died, a vision came into my bedroom while I was asleep and the bed was shaking and I woke up and I looked at the vision and it was my mother and she had come, this is really strange, she had come to get me. And I said, ‘No, I’m not, I am not going with you.’ And it was real. … But it happened, that was paranormal. I think that’s more true than all these unidentified flying objects.

Q: What inspired you to start Ordway Grove Farm?

A: There are two reasons why I started Ordway Grove Farm. I hired a man, Jessie Garcia, living in Norway, to help me (in) keeping the grounds here and we became friends. He needed employment and I came up with the idea to start a produce farm. He accepted, and we are business partners. We started three years ago and we developed the land and expanded the gardens to the size they are today and built greenhouses. The second reason is I have a passion for growing produce. It’s called Ordway Grove Farm because the farm boarders the Ordway Grove, which is a tree preserve and it has the oldest trees on the East Coast; over 200-year-old trees there, untouched.

Q: What is the most recent compliment that you have received and enjoyed?

A: I get compliments on our produce. What we do here is that we pick produce continuously, so it is the freshest possible and people recognize that. When they see the produce it looks like it was just picked, because it was. And I get compliments on that all the time. It’s the reward for doing the work.

Q: Are you a well traveled man?

A: Fairly well traveled. I’ve visited many (places in the) United States. I have been to Europe several times. One of the best trips to Europe was with the Palmetto Master Singers from Columbia, South Carolina. It was a concert in major cathedrals in France and Germany and it was an emotional experience with just the best sounds and these huge cathedrals.

Q: What do you like most about Maine?

A: It’s the weather. You won’t find a better place to be than Maine in the summer. And the beauty of the vegetation is just extraordinary. That’s why Maine is call Vacationland, and hundreds of thousands of people come every year.

Q: What kind of music do you like?

A: I like all kinds of music. I’ve always been an opera fan, I find it an extremely emotional experience that is so good for people. I like orchestras, symphony, classical, jazz bands. … I think the ’30s and ’40s developed some of the most beautiful music ever written. And in my age, I always liked the beginning of rock ‘n’ roll, not necessarily Elvis Presley type, but when the Beatles came to the United States in the early ’60s. It was fantastic. It was great music. … I find that the soft rock such as U2 is fabulous music. Just fabulous music.

Q: Do you have any special skills or talents?

A: I have a talent for restoring antique houses. The Ordway estate house here, is my fourth house that I have restored. And I’ve done that through my whole life. … It is another passion of mine. … I’ve been very lucky through my life to have had that experience and interest, cause its very, very rewarding. The first house I restored was in Poly, Massachusetts, which is in the mountains. … The owners lived in Holyoak, Massachusetts, and they had this summer farm where they experimented with apples. It was a grand house from 1860. (What) I would call an Empire style house, and I restored that back to what it looked like. It had been a tenant house for years and years and years for migrant workers. So, it was in bad condition, but I lived through it.

Q: How did you learn to restore houses?

A: Self interest … and again, my Uncle Morris had taught me more than gardening, he had taught me how to take care of a house. To do repairs, painting and so on.

Q: What’s next?

A: Grow the produce business. To continue expanding Ordway Grove Farm to a four season farm and continue growing the best and freshest produce in Norway. Also to expand to more restaurants and co-ops. Currently, we supply Nomad Café and Fair Share Co-op and we will be supplying the best produce to Norway Brewery Company. If you went to their party to celebrate raising funds for the beer garden, the produce was supplied by Ordway Farm. So how’s them for apples?