Norwich ― Gov. Ned Lamont traveled to Malerba’s Farm on Friday to taste for himself whether the 104-year-old farm on New London Turnpike has some of the best corn in Connecticut.

Lamont had not yet reached the store, when frequent Malerba’s customer Kim Jones of Norwich shouted: “It’s the best corn in the state, governor!”

She showed him her full bag of corn and said she used to buy it for her North Main Street restaurant, American Take-Out, which closed in 2008.

Inside the store, Lynsie Shea of Bozrah had the same message. Shea, 62, said she has been coming to Malerba’s since she was a little girl with her mother.

“It’s the best place in Connecticut, trust me,” she said.

Lamont got to try it for himself at the end of a 45-minute tour of open greenhouses with 8-foot-tall tomato plants, a barn with the aroma of fresh garlic and a farm store.

“Oh my gosh!” Lamont said, biting into a freshly cooked yellow corn. “If you love sweet fresh corn, I think it’s so fresh I think it’s still a vegetable, you ought to come here. It’s the best.”

Owners Vinnie and Lisa Malerba offered samples of their three corn varieties, butter and sugar, white silver queen and yellow silver queen, to the tour group Friday.

“Wow!” Mayor Peter Nystrom said of his white corn. “This is amazing. When they announce that the corn is ready, this place floods.”

Lamont, state Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt, state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, and city leaders greeted the Malerbas at their farm stand Friday afternoon, not only to try the corn and buy vegetables to take home, including Malerba’s popular varieties of garlic, but to learn about the challenges Connecticut farmers face each year.

Vinnie Malerba, whose grandfather immigrated from Italy and found the Norwich farm, summed it up: “weather and critters.”

Behind the farm store at 634 New London Turnpike, Vinnie Malerba stepped into a large patch of cantaloupe and picked up two melons. In one hand, he held a melon half eaten by a coyote, and in the other, a melon waterlogged and partially rotted from recent heavy rain.

“Six inches of rain two years in a row in July,” Malerba said, shaking his head.

On the tailgate of a pickup truck, Malerba showed Lamont’s group stalks of corn cut off about 2 feet above the base. Deer had eaten the entire top half of the plants. He partially peeled a corn ear next to those stalks to reveal missing kernels eaten by birds. He estimated he has lost about 2 acres of corn to deer and bird damage.

Malerba has shifted much of his vegetable production to his 19 active greenhouses. In the tomato greenhouse, the ends remain open to the fresh air, with a bright orange deer netting across the opening. Otherwise, he said, brazen deer would walk right through the greenhouse, eating tomatoes and plants.

To combat insect damage, Malerba purchased thousands of 2-inch square packets containing beneficial insects to eat “the bad bugs” that otherwise would attack even the greenhouse plants. With that, and for about the same cost, he no longer needs to spray pesticides.

Another challenge is development. The Malerba family once owned 20 acres at the New London Turnpike site, and a cousin owned land across the street. Now, he has 10 acres after pieces were sold off over the years as family members were not interested in farming.

The Malerbas rent 80 acres in various spots in Montville to grow corn and other vegetables.

“And all my landowners are all in their 80s,” Vinnie Malerba said. “And what’s scary about that is when they move on, it could be developed. Or hopefully they will sell the development rights, which would be great.”

The state helps to preserve farmland by purchasing development rights to keep the land as active farming.

Following the visit to Malerba’s, Lamont and Osten stopped briefly at the Marina at American Wharf at Norwich Harbor. The state provided a $2 million grant to the city to assist new marina owners Patrick and Brittany Dwyer of Somers with their extensive renovations and upgrades to the marina.

Patrick Dwyer, a lifelong boater, told Lamont the couple had eyed the marina prior to COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed their decision. He said they came back and met with Nystrom, Norwich Community Development Corp. President Kevin Brown, and Michael Aliano, the son of marina founder Ronald Aliano.

“They convinced us that this was a good place,” Patrick Dwyer said. “So, we dove in, and here we are eight months in.”

“It’s gorgeous, and you’re going to make it even more gorgeous,” Lamont said.

c.bessette@theday.com