The Copeland family farm has stood firm in Franklin Township for 158 years.

Family members have watched subdivisions pop up around their more than 60 acres and adapted to the changing world.

Plus, for the past two decades, the Copelands have run a farm market offering fresh produce.

“We’ve been doing this since 1980 when my daddy started it,” said Elaine Wall.

With five children, Bill and Donna Copeland figured the farm market would keep the kids busy in a positive environment.

“He started it so we’d have something safe during summer to work at and make some money,” Wall said.

Donna Copeland Laker shut the stand for a while after her husband died in 1990, but she works there regularly now. She spent much of Wednesday cleaning onions for sale.

“We put I don’t know how many kids through college,” Laker said. “We don’t make much ourselves, but we’re helping the community and helping kids.”

Three generations work the land and grow sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, squash and pumpkins and other produce.

“We just stress the family and quality. If I wouldn’t eat if myself, I wouldn’t sell it. Well, other than cantaloupe, I don’t care for cantaloupe,” Wall said.

The family also grows annuals and perennials for the market in two greenhouses. Planting for those starts each January.

“The things we can’t raise here or we have a hard time raising, we try to get from local growers,” Wall said.

For example, peaches arrive from Georgia until local produce is ripe.

About 12 to 15 family members and friends from church and the community help keep the farm market going.

So far this year, the weather hasn’t been real cooperative.

“The corn that I’m picking now, it was really wet — and real early, I thought, ‘Oh, it will never make anything,’ but it did. It’s just that the bugs like it, too,” Wall said. “Most people are pretty cool about that; they’ll just cut the ends off. There are some people that will throw a fit about it.”

For Wall, growing produce is a balancing act.

“It’s one of those things, you can either have a bunch of chemicals or you might have a critter or two,” she said. “I only spray what I have to do.”

Cradling fresh-picked cucumbers in her shirttail, it’s easy to see that she’s the farmer’s daughter and takes great pride in her work.

It’s also easy to see all the new subdivisions over her shoulder. They’ve cropped up fast since her father died in 1990.

“We always say they can’t get any closer because we own all the way around, and the farm across the street is a cousin’s,” she said with a laugh.

“It’s funny, when I was a kid we could go out in the backyard and scream and holler (while playing) and do whatever, and nobody would ever hear us and you know it would be dark when you went outside,” Wall said. “Now it never gets dark because everyone’s got porch lights.”

Living in an urban county that doesn’t put much stock in agriculture is another newer challenge.

“Property taxes are killing us. It’s no wonder that so many little farms are going out. This is just a way we try to earn a little more to help pay the taxes,” Wall said.

Regardless, an Indiana Department of Agriculture sign declaring the land as a Hoosier Homestead Farm owned by the same family for more than 150 years stands tall by the main drive.

“My daddy always said farmers are the biggest gamblers in the world because all we do is gamble on the weather,” Wall said. “We have no control over it whatsoever, God’s in control, not us and we have to just take what we get.”