What story by Lovecraft centers on a meteorite that poisons a farm near Arkham?

The story by H. P. Lovecraft about a meteorite that poisons a farm near Arkham is “The Colour Out of Space.”

The 1927 tale follows Nahum Gardner and his family after a meteorite crashes onto their Massachusetts farm in June 1882. Scientists find a strange, unclassifiable substance inside it, while the meteorite itself eventually vanishes after a lightning storm.

The farm initially seems blessed: crops grow enormous, but they are inedible. Soon the soil, plants, animals, and Gardner family deteriorate. The invisible or indescribable “colour” drains life from the land, leaving behind grey dust and devastation. The narrator learns the story from Ammi Pierce, who witnessed the farm’s collapse.

A common mix-up is confusing this story with Lovecraft’s Arkham-set fiction generally. “The Colour Out of Space” is specifically the meteorite-and-farm story; “The Temple,” “The Festival,” and “The Outsider” do not center on that event. Lovecraft wrote it in 1927, and it first appeared in Amazing Stories in September of that year.