In August of 2016 we purchased 54 acres at 342 North Plain Road, our first land purchase! We are humbled and grateful to be able to steward this beautiful piece of land and we honor the impact of our predecessors, Project Native, a wonderful non-profit that helped to cement the importance of native plants into the minds of locals and offered a whole new ecological lexicon to the area. The farmland owned by Project Native was put into the Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) program prior to the non-profit’s tenure to ensure it would be accessible to farmers in perpetuity. The APR program is often one of the only ways career farmers can buy land outright as affordable farmland is not easy to come by, particularly in the Berkshires. Sean and I both came to agriculture with a desire to help fix a broken system and serve our community. We are proud that North Plain Farm has been operating as an integral part of our Berkshire foodshed for 15 years and we sell all of our products within a 100 mile radius. In many ways, this opportunity signifies a victory for local and organic agriculture. We were poised to accept this assignment as a viable farm business because our operation exists in a region so well educated about the importance of buying local food and deeply committed to supporting family farms. New England has a long history of dairy and livestock farming and this type of agriculture is key to our regional food sovereignty. In our agrarian past, the Berkshires were full of pasture as far as the eye could see and research published by Food Solutions New England tells us that Southern New England could produce all of the dairy, beef and other animal products needed to feed our population if livestock and dairy farmers had adequate access to land. Our 100% grass-fed dairy and diversified livestock farm pastures cows, goats, hogs and chickens in a rotational grazing system and we have an uncompromising commitment to Non-GMO/Organic feed. Our farming methods are carefully crafted to promote maximum soil recovery and biodiversity within the farm ecosystem. We strive to be in harmony with the wildlife, pollinating insects and wild plants we see everyday within the pastures and forests.
We are thrilled to finally have the space to expand and improve upon our operation. The infrastructure and land will also be used to further develop our passion projects of beekeeping, herb and vegetable cultivation, food preservation, agrarian education and research on carbon sequestration in rotational grazing systems, to name a few. We are developing agroforestry and silvopasture plans that are mutually beneficial for trees, forage crops and animals. We will continue to confidently build the business we have centered our lives around and will do our very best by our livestock, our employees, our neighbors and the land. We will be working with other like-minded farmers to continue to contribute to the vibrant farming economy of the Berkshires.
Thanks for your support, we look forward to seeing you at the farm!
-Tess