STERLING, Mass. — A longtime family-owned apple orchard in Sterling has managed to turn its uncertain future around by attracting a new crowd of customers who go there to play its disc golf course.

Three years ago, Meadowbrook Orchards was facing many of the same hardships felt by apple orchards across the region. Owner David Chandler said he felt like he was always looking for a way to get to the next week, but one of his employees had the unique idea of building a disc golf course on the property.

“We were struggling,” Chandler said. “The state of the apple industry right now, it’s very difficult and hard to make money. I don’t think we would be here without having the income of the disc golf course.”

Since David’s great-great grandfather John started the business in 1912, the story of Meadowbrook has always been one of survival and adaptation. It began as a cattle farm, but when a fire killed all the family’s cows in 1927, apples became their livelihood.

Ninety-seven years later, the apple orchard continues to thrive thanks to a sport which, like apple picking, has become quite a tourist attraction in Central Massachusetts.

David said the success of other nearby courses like Maple Hill in Leicester, currently ranked as the fourth-best disc golf course in the world, has had a trickle-down effect as other highly-rated courses like Meadowbrook have sprouted up. Meadowbrook is currently ranked as the second-best course in Massachusetts on UDisc.

“People travel to Central Mass., to the Worcester area, to play disc golf, because we have so many good courses so close together, which is really cool,” Chandler said. “It's fun to see people coming from almost every province in Canada, [and] last year we had visitors from 48 out of 50 states. We’ve had European countries. I’ve had people from Australia.”

After the course opened several years ago, it got even more attention when pro disc golfer and Shrewsbury native Simon Lizotte filmed a video there. He’s continued to visit since - he was there on Wednesday trying out a second course David has been working on at the other side of the orchard.

“It kind of blew me away when Simon did his first video here and it had over 100,000 views,” Chandler said. “They absolutely help because they're touring pros, people from the West Coast see their videos and they want to come here because of seeing those videos.”

As Meadowbrook rounds out a busy fall season, David is filled with optimism for the future of both the disc golf course and the apple orchard.

“We can have more varieties, we can have more options,” Chandler said. “But having the disc golf here has given us the opportunity to be able to make those choices, I wasn't thinking that way three years ago. It was, ‘How are we going to survive this week? How are we going to make payroll? How are we going to keep moving?'”