Birch Brook Farm is a first-generation farm with ties to a long family history. Owners Molly and Sam Lane raises and sells pasture-raised meats like beef, pork, chicken and turkey “way up in the sticks” in Heath, Molly Lane said.
“We believe animals should be raised as the animals should live — pigs rooting in the woods, cattle-grazing open fields, chickens and turkeys scratching the ground and looking for bugs,” she said. “Our small-scale farm focuses on the well being of the animals and the land.”
This venture began in response to conventional meat production methods. “It started as a way to provide meat for our own family, because I really hated the thought of how animals are factory farmed. We wanted to eat good quality meat from animals that were raised happy and healthy,” Lane said. “My husband and our neighbor at the time decided they wanted to breed their own pigs, so they bought a pregnant sow who was due in a couple of weeks — a Red Wattle named Lady, who was the sweetest pig I’ve ever known. I don’t really know what spurred them — our daughter was only 2 at the time, and our barn needed some work, and we really didn’t have much existing knowledge about this. We spent a lot of time talking to people, trying to learn everything we needed to know, and luckily she had an easy farrowing (birth process). That was the kickoff of our journey.”
Since that sudden plunge into the world of raising livestock 12 years ago, the Lanes have settled into meat production on a manageable scale for their family and for their land base. Each year, they raise 12-20 pigs, 2-4 cows, 25ish chickens and just a handful of Thanksgiving turkeys.
Unlike the individual cuts of meat found in a grocery store, Birch Brook Farm’s meat is sold “on the hoof.” Customers can buy whole birds, pork by wholes or halves and beef by wholes, halves or quarters.
“I’m very invested in low stress on the animal, so we prioritize the most humane, least stressful form of death,” Lane said. “That’s why we sell them the way we do, so we can use custom on-farm processing. I hated the idea of the slaughterhouse, and having to transport the animals and the stress that causes them.”
In this model, Stratton’s Custom Meats brings a mobile slaughter unit to the farm and then cuts, packages and freezes the meat for each customer, according to their individual specifications at their facility in New York state.
A whole cow weighs 600-800 pounds, which comes out to around 350-480 pounds of beef after butchering. A whole pig weighs 180-200 pounds, which provides around 125-140 pounds of pork. That is a lot of meat, even for those buying just half a pig or a quarter of a cow, but Birch Brook Farm’s customers come back for it year after year.
“The flavor of the meat you get when you purchase directly from a farmer is so much better than anything you’ll get in the grocery store,” Lane said. “People tell me they don’t like pork, and I say, ‘have you ever had a pork chop directly from the farm?’ because grocery store pork chops have no fat, no flavor, and they dry out in 2 seconds. If you buy it from a farmer, it has rich flavor. Our customers love that, and they like to buy from someone where they know exactly how the animal was raised. Plus, they get to fill the freezer and don’t have to buy meat every week. When you break it down, they get some cost savings this way too.”
Birch Brook Farm operates on a relatively small scale for a meat business, and the Lanes have worked hard to find the right balance for their business and for the land. “This year especially, I feel like we’ve really zeroed in on what works for our family and our size,” Lane said. “I don’t want the farm to grow to a point where I can’t move the pigs off the land quickly enough for the land to be healthy, because they can be very destructive.”
In a balanced system, she says, livestock — and pigs especially — are enormously important to healthy lands. “The animals play such a huge role in management of the land, especially open lands. Parts of this land have been steadily farmed over the years, but it hasn’t been managed properly and it’s been overgrazed,” she said. “So we’re working on bringing it back and we’ve been using the pigs for a lot of that. They’re bringing back the soil, they do excavation after trees are cut, they fertilize and keep down weeds without having to use chemicals. Livestock has a huge role in farming, in keeping the land open and usable and healthy.”
Healthy lands are important to the Lanes and to Birch Brook Farm for the well-being of their animals and their farm business, but also because of Molly Lane’s familial connections to the land they steward in Heath. “We farm probably 10 acres of our own property between pasture and woodlots, and we have the amazing luck of wonderful neighbors, which gives us access to around 50 more acres,” says Lane. “The house we live in was my grandfather’s house, and the home above us is where my grandfather grew up. Those neighbors own a large piece of land where we hay and keep cows, and there are two other farms that we hay and also keep cows on, all of which were part of my great-grandfather’s farm. So we don’t own my family’s whole farm, but we do get to farm the same land. I’m very sentimental, and when I’m out there I think about the fact that my great-grandfather hayed that same field — but he did it with only horses!”
Birch Brook Farm is now taking orders for pork shares, which will be available in January. Find them on Facebook at Birch Brook Farm.
Claire Morenon, communications manager at CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To learn about more local meat producers, visit CISA’s online guide at buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally.
