What binds this family and its customers together, Evelyn says, is really one thing: love. That, and a five-pound blueberry pie.
1899 — From Sicily Evelyn's grandfather arrived from Sicily and became one of the first successful fruit farmers in South Jersey — in Hammonton, the blueberry capital of the world.
1920s — The farm — He bought the land that still holds the barn. A century on, the family is still on it.
The barn — They were going to tear it down for new buildings Jessie, Evelyn's mother, refused. “It was too beautiful a barn.” They jacked it up and moved it across Route 206, next to the pond, where it sat untouched for twenty years.
1980s — A single mother of Vincenzo and Fred, and a seventh-grade English teacher, Evelyn was not a baker. After school and weekends she’d run the farm market, and her mother started baking pies. Customers loved them, and demanded more. “Fred, I can’t even boil water,” she told her son. He talked her into starting a full pie shop anyway.
2000s — Pumpkin ricotta, nationally — Today Show’s Al Roker wanted the pumpkin-ricotta pie for a Food Network Thanksgiving segment. Evelyn said no — the barn couldn’t mass-produce. Then the crew called from the Turnpike. They were on their way and filmed it anyway. Al Roker and The Food Network gave Evelyn and her pie shop the boost it needed, and inspired her to expand to even more varieties of pies.
Now — Three generations Pies are still sold only at the Red Barn. “Our business may be pies, but warmth, pride and caring is our true family legacy.”
“You need to move with the fruit.” The riper the fruit, the less sugar it needs. Blueberries are cooked down for their juice, then hand-mixed and packed into pre-baked crusts. Once you try to mass-produce, Evelyn says, the quality is gone. She retired from teaching English in 2006 and grew the menu to eighteen seasonal varieties. They are still sold only at the Red Barn. Three generations pitch in.
