Drive out Route 25 past Sebago Brewing Company on a Wednesday afternoon this September and you will see two things side by side: the same tents and awnings that have sheltered the Cherry Hill Farmers Market for five seasons now, and, just beyond them, a stone-and-timber skeleton that has been rising slowly since last fall. Vendors are still packing up their tables when the sky turns, the way they have since the market started. But that is about to change, and the change is bigger than a new roof.
The building going up is called Cherry Hill Barn, a 60-by-100-foot structure with room for 400 people, built by Shaw Brothers Construction on the family's own 258-acre farm. Most people driving past assume it is a wedding venue. It is that. But reading it only as event space misses what actually makes it worth paying attention to if you live in Gorham: this is the third piece of infrastructure the Shaw family has built or rescued on this land since the family foundation bought the property just over a decade ago, and each piece has quietly become something the town now depends on.
What's actually going up
The barn's first job, according to the project's own backers, is not hosting receptions. It is giving the farmers market a permanent address. For five years now the market has operated exactly the way it started: a dozen or so vendors, tents and awnings, Wednesdays from 2 to 6 p.m., mid-June through September, weather and all. Once the barn opens, that market moves inside. Shaw Brothers has been in discussion with Sebago Brewing to help run it going forward.
The building will also carry a commercial kitchen serving breakfast and lunch on market days, live piano music while people shop, and an ice cream shop operated by MK Kitchen, the same team behind the restaurant at 2 School Street in Gorham Village. On top of that, it becomes bookable space for weddings, reunions, and town functions, at a scale nothing else on Route 25 currently offers.
None of that required a zoning fight or a town vote. It is happening because a private family foundation decided to build it on private land, the same way they have handled almost everything else on this property.
This isn't their first rescue
If you have hiked the trails at Shaw Cherry Hill Farm, you have probably already walked past the family's first save: the Mosher Barn, a structure built around 1820 that the Shaws relocated from Lower Main Street and reassembled on the farm. That barn now houses the Gorham Historical Society's full archive: town records, personal letters, family papers, historic photographs, available to researchers and genealogists by appointment.
The land itself carries an even longer paper trail. The 258 acres trace back to a 300-acre grant made in 1730, during the reign of King George II, to a Massachusetts man named John Tyng. The Shaw name on the property comes from Dewayn Shaw, father of Danny and Jon Shaw, who renamed the family's West Gorham farm Cherry Hill in the 1960s after buying a registered Holstein herd from H.P. Hood's own Cherry Hill Farm in Massachusetts. Before it became what it is now, the parcel was at various points considered for a large housing project, a gas plant, and a landfill.
So the pattern is not new. First they saved a 200-year-old barn and gave it to the town's history. Then they opened nearly three miles of trails with river access to anyone who wants to hike, bike, or paddle in. Now they are building a third structure meant to hold the market, the food, and the town's gatherings all at once. Each addition has made the farm function more like public infrastructure, even though none of it is publicly owned.
What actually changes on a Wednesday
Here is where the barn stops being an abstraction and starts changing an actual weekly routine. Right now, a trip to the Cherry Hill Farmers Market means checking the forecast. Jean Cayer, the market's manager, has run it since it started, and she has been direct about what a roof means to her vendors.
"We're going to have a home."
That is not sentiment for its own sake. It is the difference between a market that can be rained out and one that cannot. Once the barn is finished, the same dozen vendors selling produce, meat, baked goods, and crafts get a space that does not depend on the weather, plus a food program and ice cream counter that did not exist before.
The rest of the 258 acres does not disappear once the barn opens. It is still there, and still worth using on its own:
- Marked trails covering close to three miles, open for hiking and biking in warm weather, skiing and snowshoeing in winter
- Direct access to the Presumpscot River for hand-carried canoes and kayaks
- A working cattle barn with the farm's Red Angus herd
- The Mosher Barn, home to the Gorham Historical Society's archive, open to the public by appointment and through occasional open houses
Combine that with the Cherry Hill Farm Ultra, a 50k trail race that now runs its course on these same loops every September, and the property has become something closer to a small civic campus than a single farm stand.
What's still unconfirmed
Reporting on this project has been consistent about the big picture and honest about the details still in motion. As of late July 2026, the venue's own construction updates described the opening as targeted for fall, without a firm date. The building's final name was still being settled as recently as last September, though Cherry Hill Barn is what stuck. Shaw Brothers Construction has not released a project cost.
If you are planning around this, the practical advice is simple: do not book a date or plan a visit assuming the barn will be open by a specific week. Watch the Cherry Hill Farmers Market's own updates for the actual transition date, and treat any fall timeline as a target rather than a promise. The trails, the Mosher Barn, and the existing outdoor market are open right now and do not require waiting on construction to enjoy.
The bigger pattern, restated
A new event venue landing in a small Maine town is not, by itself, a story. What makes Cherry Hill Barn worth understanding is that it is not landing. It is the latest step in something the Shaw family has been doing deliberately for more than a decade: taking pieces of a working farm that were at risk of being lost, paved over, or rained out, and turning them into something the whole town gets to use. The market gets a roof. The town's history gets a home. The trails stay open. None of it needed a public vote, and all of it changes what a Wednesday on Route 25 actually looks like.
For anyone weighing what makes a town like Gorham function day to day, this is a better data point than most: not a new subdivision or a new stoplight, but a private family quietly building the kind of shared space towns usually have to fight for.
If you're curious how developments like this fit into the bigger picture of life in Gorham, our Gorham community guide covers what else makes the town tick, and our recent look at summer Thursdays at Little Falls rounds out the picture of how Gorham spends its evenings. And if you ever want to talk through what's happening in this market beyond the headlines, the Scoville Foley Team is always glad to help.
