MARTINSBURG, W.Va. – Most weekends during the fall and into Christmas Orr’s Farm Market in Martinsburg is packed with visitors taking hay rides to the pumpkin patch or live Nativity, listening to local musicians and snapping family pictures at the various photo settings scattered around the farm.
Last Sunday, in fact, rang up the second largest sales of the week.
However, market manager Katie Orr-Dove, whose family has operated the fruit orchard and agri-tourism destination for decades, was being led in a different direction.
“Back in the spring, I just felt God put it on my heart that we should be closed on Sundays. And so I said, ‘I’m going to do it in November,’ and I just kept praying about it. That’s a hard thing to do because that’s our second biggest sales day of the week,” she said.
Feedback from the folks who work at the market has been positive.
“It’s just amazing that it works itself out. The staff has been coming up to me and saying how much they’re enjoying having that day to be with their families and how it’s blessed them…It just confirms that I did the right thing and listened to what I was being told to do,” Orr-Dove said.
Orr’s Farm Market partnered with area churches to put on a Live Nativity series on the weekends leading up to Christmas. Orr-Dove said she knew she wanted to bless some organizations doing good work in the community. Instead of charging for folks to see the Christmas attraction, they took donations.
More than 2,000 people came out to theLive Nativity over three weekends, raising $4,088.40 to be split between the Martinsburg Rescue Mission and The Berkeley County Children’s Home Society.
Orr-Dove said she plans to continue being closed on Sunday.
“We need a day to just rest and regroup, and just be in a quiet place and pray and be with our families and pick each other back up,” she said. “And then we feel like we start our Monday on a better foot.”