LONDONDERRY — Woodmont Orchards was sold last week to a private Massachusetts-based real estate company, Pillsbury Realty Holdings LLC, for $7 million.
"It was about time to sell," said Steve Lievens, who ran Woodmont with his brother Bob. "We've been losing money over the last 10 years and have talked about selling for two years now."
Lievens said that the orchard's main customer was DeMoulas Market Basket and it just wasn't enough to sustain the business.
"I do miss the old days, when it was a viable operation," he said.
The property includes 280 acres along Gilcreast and Pillsbury Roads, 200 of them used for apple farming. It was purchased in the 1930s by Edward Lievens and farmed by the family until last summer, when the brothers decided not to maintain and harvest the orchards.
Market Basket sold the Macintosh and Cortland apples harvested each fall.
Michael Kettenbach Sr. is listed as a principal in Pillsbury Realty and he is the head of real estate acquisitions for DeMoulas. The Woodmont property does abut the back of the Market Basket store on Route 102.
Lievens said he "assumes Kettenbach will try to extend the commercial area."
In 2008, the Lievens family decided not to renew a lease on another 200-acre orchard in Hollis.
Lievens said Woodmont has been whittling down employees over the last couple of years in preparation for the sale.
"We have a cousin who owns an apple orchard in Canterbury and when some of our pickers from Jamaica returned this year, they went to work there," he said.
