WHITMAN − Peaceful Meadows will continue as an ice cream stand and dairy shop under new owner John Hornstra, of Hornstra Farms in Norwell.
Hornstra made the highest bid at $1.75 million during a much-anticipated auction held on-site Tuesday, Aug. 29. The property includes the ice cream stand, a dairy processing building, a retail store and offices, 55 acres of farmland and a four-bedroom 19th-century farmhouse on Bedford Street/Route 18. A 10% auction fee will be added to the sale.
A two-family home and a single-family home across the street were also auctioned off. They were purchased by a buyer for a little over $700,000, not including the fee.
What was sold on Bedford Street/Route 18
The two lots on the Peaceful Meadows side had a combined assessed value of just under $1 million going into the auction, according to Whitman’s property assessment website. The two homes at 67 and 81 Bedford St. facing Peaceful Meadows are assessed at about $850,000 total.
JJManning Auctioneers oversaw the auction, which drew about 15 to 20 potential buyers. About twice as many people were there as spectators.
Justin Manning, head of the auction house, expected the combined sale for all four parcels to bring in between $2.5 million and $3 million. The final combined selling price of about $2.7 million, including the fees, landed right between the two estimates.
The sale marks the end of the 60-year-old Peaceful Meadows business, which until last Friday also included the company’s Plymouth location at Village Landing near the waterfront. Despite initial assurances by the auction house that the location would remain open, it closed Aug. 25 after serving the last of its remaining inventory.
More:Peaceful Meadows in Whitman is closing. Here’s what we know.
As the bid went from $1.7 million to $1.75 million, Hornstra said he was briefly on the fence until he saw his son, who will be the fifth generation to oversee the business, roll his eyes at him. The final amount was close to his dad’s last bid.
“I ended up spending a little more than I thought I would, but I didn’t want to disappoint everyone on the South Shore” by letting the property potentially convert to commercial use, he said. “I just couldn’t bear that thought.”
Here’s the history of Peaceful Meadows
A Peaceful Meadows shop in Middleboro opened in 1977 and the Plymouth shop four years later. The Middleboro shop closed in 2022.
After the auction, family members who had gathered on the farmhouse porch to watch the sales were greeted with congratulations, hugs and a few tears from friends of the family and longtime customers.
The family members, area residents and customers applauded as the winning bid was announced. Many had hoped Hornstra would win so the farm could be preserved and its equipment modernized to continue offering homemade ice cream that would be even homier if cows are brought back to the property after a decades-long absence, as Hornstra said he would like to see.
More:Ahead of Peaceful Meadows auction, an interested buyer speaks up. See who it is
In the shorter term, Hornstra said he hopes to have at least the dairy store up and running by November to fulfill the Thanksgiving and Christmas demand for eggnog.