Company profile: Huber family operations.

• Author: Baird, Bob
• Position: Joe Huber Family Farm Orchard & Restaurant

Bringing "entertainment farming" to Southern Indiana

It's hard to imagine what German settlers named Huber would say if they returned to their old haunt in the knobs of Southern Indiana in Clark County.

Reminded of their native Rhineland when they settled the area in 1843, today they'd marvel at the rows and acres of well-tended fruits and vegetables at not one, but two, farms bearing the Huber name. They'd admire the processing facilities and produce markets offering everything from apples to zucchini. They'd swell with pride that after seven generations, the Huber farming tradition lives on in America.

However, the tradition has been jazzed up a little.

At one location, laughing, squealing children and adults ride hay wagons. Folks file into a home-style restaurant featuring dishes made with fresh-picked ingredients. At the other farm, people sample premium wine, as well as fresh-made cheese, ice cream and bread, and tour wine tasting rooms, the cellar and vineyards.

Large groups converge upon a "country picnic and barnyard bash" building. Some people await a hot-air balloon or helicopter ride, others chip golf balls into a pond. Families take their children to a petting zoo and feed the ducks and fish. In the fall visitors enjoy the Chuckwagon Stampede with its German food and oom-pah-pah, and busloads of screaming youngsters arrive to pick pumpkins, greeted by storytellers dressed as witches, scarecrows or Johnny Appleseed.

This is "entertainment farming," says principal proponent Joe Huber Jr., who since 1968 has masterminded, with the able support of his family, a combination produce market and down-on-the-farm entertainment complex near the community of Starlight. "Joe Huber is a farmer with the soul of an entertainer and the ingenuity...