Over the years, Way Fruit Farm has become a Centre County tradition. The family farm has been part of the community for nearly 200 years.
Nowadays, families and friends from around the region know to pack up and travel out to 2355 Halfmoon Valley Road, Port Matilda, if they want to get a little taste of farm life. In the early summer, people wait patiently for announcements that the farm’s cherries, peaches, strawberries, and more are ripe and ready to enjoy. During the fall harvest, folks flock to the apple orchards and pumpkin patches, and weekend festivals bring in the crowds for apple dumplings, crafts, and family fun.
All year long, the farm store is open for those seeking fresh produce, apple cider, other local specialty products and baked goods (apple cider donuts, yum!), and sandwiches, soups, and salads from the café and deli. On Saturday mornings, the café’s tables are filed with families and friends enjoying a farm fresh breakfast.
Around the walls of the café are pictures from the farm and the Way family’s long history in Halfmoon Valley, connecting the past and the present.
Yes, life is good out at Way Fruit Farm, and sixth-generation owners Jason and Megan (Way) Coopey are happy to share as much of that life with their customers as they can.
Now they are packing up some of that farm goodness and bringing it to downtown State College, with Way Fruit Farm Downtown market and café at 252 East Calder Way.
Jason and Megan have grown the farm’s retail area and updated the storage facility and cider press operations since returning to the family farm in 2008. The fun and hardworking couple has embraced social media, reaching a new audience with their posts and updates, all while working to be part of the local community.
“We believe in helping people and being a part of the community. I think that what’s going to be fun about being downtown is now we are going to be a part of the downtown community, which I don’t know if town knows what’s coming,” says Jason with a laugh. What’s coming is something that has been growing for a long time.
Strong roots
While the Way family farm was established in 1825, it was almost 150 years ago that apple orchards became a part of the operation. It was then that Robert A. Way and Lucretia Fisher were given a wedding present from her father, William P. Fisher of Unionville, that would keep on giving: 1,000 apple trees. Robert A. Way planted those trees on the property that had been passed down to him by his father, Robert Way, and remains part of Way Fruit Farm to this day.
The Ways’ history in the Halfmoon Valley stretches back even further. Robert’s parents, Jane and Caleb Way, moved to the valley in 1792, operating a farm in Stormstown.
Robert was one of Jane and Caleb’s fourteen children. He bought and began farming the 90 acres of land that became the start of Way Fruit Farm after he married in 1825. Later, after those first wedding-gift apple trees came to fruit, his son, Robert A., would use his horse and wagon to travel to Philipsburg to sell apples. He also sent them by train from Port Matilda to Philadelphia.
The next generation of Ways, Darlington Hoopes (D.H.) and Ida, took over in 1925. They expanded the farm by buying property at the top of what is now Orchard Road in 1927 and planting a mixture of apple, peach, and other trees. As D.H. expanded the farm’s sales out to Pittsburgh, he also gave the farm its official and current name. After D.H. passed away in 1944, Ida ran the farm with her sons before passing it to her son Elwood and his wife, Emily, in 1950.
During the 1950s, Elwood began selling apples in plastic bags directly to grocery store chains, and he built a new apple storage facility. A roadside retail business was set up, and eventually that became the focus. Sweet corn, pumpkins, apple butter, and apple cider were added to the line-up along with pre-picked strawberries in 1976.
In 1981, one of Elwood and Emily’s four sons, Brooks Way, and his wife, Sharon, took over the operation. They expanded much of the fruit offerings on the farm, adding more varieties of peaches along with cherries, plums, and apricots. They were the first to dive into what has become a buzz word in farming, agritourism, by offering festivals, wagon rides, and pumpkin picking in the fall.
When it was time to update the apple storage and retail facility, Brooks got a little help from his daughter and her husband when Megan and Jason—the current owners—returned to the farm with a vision for its future.
Growing the family tree
You can feel the connection between Megan and Jason just by being around them. They joke easily with each other and seem to enjoy watching all their hard work pay off, building their family legacy. The pair has helped usher Way Fruit Farm to the next phase of growth with their smarts, hard work, and can-do attitudes.
Looking back, Megan says growing up on the farm had its ups and downs. She enjoyed having the large area to roam around on four-wheelers and trackers and had fun working at the farm festivals. Still, there was a lot of picking—both fruit from the trees and rocks from the fields.
“Anytime you would complain, my dad was like, ‘Oh, it just builds character.’ As I got older I’d be like, ‘Look, I have so much character it’s coming out of my ears. Can I stop now?’” says Megan, laughing.
She met Jason in 4-H. He grew up in Penns Valley and they both attended college at Penn State. After graduating and getting married, farming was not something that was on their minds. Jason worked as an EMT while at Penn State before becoming a police officer. He later worked for FEMA and then served as a federal agent for 10 years, doing fraud work for the Office of the Inspector General. Megan worked as a teacher, but once they started a family, they were drawn back to the farm, just like many a Way family member before them.
“It’s funny, most Ways that perpetuated it, you didn’t necessarily think it was going to that person,” says Megan. “We did the same. We both got college degrees, went away for a while, and came back. So, I feel like everyone has to decide if it’s for them, because farming is not very much fun if you decide it’s not for you. It is a lot of long hours, a lot of thankless jobs, a lot of dirt. You know, just a lot of everything.”
While Jason loved certain aspects of his work as a federal agent, the paperwork that comes with the territory didn’t fit his energetic personality. He is plenty active on the farm these days, putting in long hours. But he had a lot to learn getting started, having never farmed fruit before.
When they first came back, Megan’s parents were not quite ready to retire and were still part of the operation. Together the family started moving in a direction that proved to be very fruitful by expanding the retail store and adding the bakery, café, and deli.
“My thought when we first expanded was we wanted to make it more of a destination, rather than just a roadside stand with seasonal products,” says Megan. Her parents had started that trend with the fall festivals and by selling apple cider, jellies, and apple butter, she says, “and those were things we started to be known for, but when we came back, I had a great interest in cooking and baking … so adding the bakery and café was something that came very naturally to us. It allowed the customers to come out, get a meal at the café, and shop around while they sip a hot cider. Then they are going to get apple cider donuts for breakfast tomorrow.”
Customers are also able to pick up a wide variety of local products from the Ways and other local producers, such as milk, meat products, and unique candies and crafts.
“In the old days you used to have a baker, a butcher shop, and even though we are supposed to have a lot more time in life nowadays, we seem to have less, so it was our concept to combine all those things for customers,” says Jason.
Festivals and art shows bring more people out to the farm and to the store. Penn State students and their families come out by the carload on weekends to soak up a unique Centre County experience.
With Megan behind the camera and Jason in front, the couple’s social media presence on Facebook and Instagram connects them to an even broader community that can keep track of what is happening on the farm.
From picking to pick-ups
On a snowy night in January 2019, Jason and Megan were out to eat at a restaurant in Pittsburgh when they noticed orders being stacked up high for the delivery driver to pick up.
“I was like, wow, if that many people are ordering Grub Hub on a Sunday night in January. … Just because we’re a small fruit farm in central Pennsylvania doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be following the trends,” said Jason.
A year before COVID, they had their online store up and running, getting an order here and there.
“Everybody laughed at me for doing deliveries, and then COVID hit,” says Jason. While other retailers hastily set up delivery services, Way fruit Farm was ahead of the game. “This is when we really reached a lot of new customers.”
Many of those customers have stuck around. All the while, Megan and Jason continued their efforts to support the community. In 2021, when the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts and People’s Choice Festival were both canceled for a second year, Way Fruit Farm decide to hold their own art festival, Art in the Orchard, during the traditional festival weekend to give artists and local food trucks an opportunity to connect with the public. It has become a new tradition.
That same year, the Coopeys launched A Way To Help, a nonprofit that helps neighbors facing financial difficulties. Many of their events serve as fundraisers for these efforts. Giving back has always been part of the family’s way of doing things.
“Part of the history of this farm has always been charitable,” Jason says. “Her grandparents were actually Quakers, and there’s actually a very, very high likelihood that this was one of the stops on the Underground Railroad. There was an old farmhouse that was down there had a secret room in it. … So there’s always been a charitable side of this family. We decided to start A Way To Help, and what we do is we provide, I call them smaller grants, to individuals just to get by.”
Proving that things come full circle in life, their children, Emma, 16, Katherine, 14, and Evan, 10, now help out at the farm and café. But, just as Megan wasn’t pressured to take on the farm when she grew up, Jason and Megan want their kids to decide on their own if the family business is for them. Now, they are just working to build their family legacy into something the kids can continue to be proud of.
“You know, once we’ve done our jobs, I feel no pressure for my kids to do something if they don’t want to do it. If they want to go out and do different and greater things, then that’s totally fine. If they want to be here and partner with us, I just hope to not drive them crazy as I get older,” says Megan, laughing again.
Branching out
With a little luck, by the time this story comes out, the Coopeys and their team will have settled into their home away from home at their new market and café on Calder Way at the former home of Rotelli and, most recently, Little Food Court.
With two floors of space to work with, the Coopeys plan to bring as much of their farm life downtown as possible. Upstairs will have a farmers market feel, with fresh produce from the farm along with baked goods and a café. On the first floor, customers will find a seating area along with jarred goods and other retail products the farm store is known for. From their famous bakery items and their café sandwiches to their farm fresh fruits and produce, things should feel very similar to the farm store out in Halfmoon Valley.
“As we talked about doing this expansion, our biggest thing is making sure that we are who we are. Because sometimes when things grow, they change,” says Jason.
Megan adds, “We feel like we have what we want going, and so that either succeeds or it doesn’t.”
That doesn’t mean that there won’t be some learning curves as they work to serve a new audience of Penn State students and faculty. After all, says Megan, “I did go to Penn State, and I think we do food pretty well. But I keep thinking to myself, ‘Ok, Megan, if you were 18 would you want this in that store? If you were 21, would you want this? I know there are a lot of things I don’t know because I can’t transport myself back in time.”
Having gone through plenty of change and growth over the past 14 years, the Coopeys know they can continue to adjust while keeping true to what they do best—providing fresh, local food to happy customers.
“I joke that town doesn’t know what’s coming for it, but I do honestly mean that a little bit,” says Jason. He says the small-town feel provided by many local businesses is what drew them to State College. While that feel seems to be creeping away with each new high-rise, he hopes “that this moment post-COVID is going to be a little bit of a return to more local businesses to town. I am hoping we can be a portion of that, to where it keeps downtown unique. It keeps that character. It keeps that State College that we all know and love.” T&G
UPCOMING EVENTS AT WAY FRUIT FARM
2355 Halfmoon Valley Road, Port Matilda
Music Festival and Pumpkin Patch
Sept. 30, 3-7 p.m.
Oct. 1, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
The pumpkin patch opens, live local music (4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-1 p.m, & 2-4 p,m. Saturday), food trucks, apple picking and more.
Harvest Craft Festival
Oct. 7, 3-7 p.m.
Oct. 8., 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Craft vendors, food trucks, pumpkin patch open, wagon rides, apple picking and live music (4-6 p.m. Friday; noon-2 p.m. Saturday)
Eric Jones & Everything Pumpkin
Oct. 14, 3-6:30 p.m.
Oct. 15, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Professional pumpkin carving demonstrations with Eric Jones, small-group carving tutorial class (registration info TBA), wagon rides and pumpkin patch open, bunny barn, bounce house, food trucks and live music (4-6 p.m. Friday; noon-2 p.m. Saturday).
Last Fall Hurrah
Oct. 21, 3-6:30 p.m.
Oct. 22, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Apple picking, pumpkin picking, wagon rides and the annual caramel apple bar.
Indoor Christmas Craft Show
Dec. 3, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
Craft vendors, meet Santa event, kettle corn, and shop local for the holidays.
Visit wayfruitfarm.com and facebook.com/wayfruitfarm for updates.
Vincent Corso is a staff writer for Town&Gown and The Centre County Gazette.
