During July, we traveled the winding dirt roads of the Northeast Kingdom under beautiful, expansive blue skies to visit three farms that focus on pastured livestock. Curious cattle with mouths full of green grass ran towards the pasture’s edge to greet us, an assertive bull introduced us to his ladies, chatty turkeys garbled loudly at new visitors, and spunky pigs enjoyed a cool shower with hose water, all across the NEK as farmers shared about their systems. We enjoyed beautiful mountains in the distance, felt the wind in our hair, and listened to bees buzzing as they pollinated thistles and burdock and other wildflowers. The farm dogs and kids came along, excited to show us their turf, and afterwards we shared meals together and built community around the working land. 
 

The hilly terrain and short growing season in the northeast part of Vermont does not lend itself to easy farming or much annual cropland, but it does grow grass well. In northern Vermont, perennial grasses provide many small farms with their livelihood. CAE celebrated this conversion from sunlight to grass to food through a series of three on-farm pasture walks. 

Over the three events, more than 120 people gathered to learn about pastured livestock, perennial pasture management, and engage in conversation with neighbors and local farmers. Each farm we visited pasture animals, meaning that the animals they keep live mostly outdoors on pasture, and their main food source are grasses they forage themselves. Chandler Pond Farm in Wheelock raises beef cows; Northwind Farm in Walden has a herd of 80 dairy cows; and Hillside Farm in East Albany raises chickens, turkeys, and pigs. 

Chandler Pond Farm

Chandler Pond Farm is a diversified farm in Wheelock, owned and operated by the Dill Family since 2016. Mark and Dahlia Dill come from a farming family and moved to the NEK ten years ago to purchase the property that is now Chandler Pond Farm. The land had been a farm for many generations and features an iconic barn built during WWI and a dam at Chandler Pond that was part of a CCC project in the 1930s. After being rented to many different farmers, the land was conserved with the Vermont Land Trust, and Mark and Dahlia went through a competitive process to become the next stewards of the land. 

The vast majority of the conserved 260-acre farm is a grass-based system, raising a 100% grass-fed beef herd, rotationally grazed on pasture from May through October, and sustained on hay and baleage for the winter months. The herd of Belted Galloways is born and raised on the farm, and beef is sold as individual cuts, bundles, quarters, and custom cut sides year-round, direct to the consumer through on-farm sales and online orders.

The farm also produces hay for sale, strawberries and blueberries, cut flowers, seasonal products, hosts workshops and events, and has a bustling on-site farm store featuring their own products as well as a wide variety from other local farms and small businesses. Farm-stays in a newly added off-grid cabin, new this summer, offer guests the opportunity to more closely connect with the land and experience the rhythms of life on a working Vermont farm. Guided by the belief that, "Good things grow here,” the Dill family is committed to stewarding the land, raising quality food, and creating meaningful connections between people, agriculture, and their local community.

Northwind Farm

Northwind Farm is an organic dairy in South Walden run by Geordie Lynd and Silene DeCiucies. Their herd of 80 cows calve in March and April, graze most of their diet on 100 hilly acres from May through October, eat bales on pasture in the late fall, and take the winter off: the whole herd is dry together in January and February. The farm, which has been on this land for 16 years, strives to produce a high quality product and run a profitable business by focusing on pasture ecology and the cow’s ability to harvest their own feed and distribute nutrients. 
 

A major way they capture nutrients is through an underground manure piping system that separates the liquids and solids. It uses a big pump to move the liquid to different parts of the farm, irrigating with the fertilizer. The piping system is a way to move the manure around the farm without using large trucks picking up from the manure pit, which is expensive. More than 90 gallons of water is used twice daily to wash all of the milking equipment after morning and evening milkings. This water is captured as a resource for fertilizing: as an organic farm they attain nutrients based on the way they graze and recapturing the waste from their herd.

With Geordie’s and Silene’s intense focus on pasture management, nutrient recapture, and herd management, they have been able to increase the fertility of the soil and pasture by 50 - 60 times since the farm began in 2010. Northwind Farm sells their organic fluid milk to Stonyfield Organic.

Hillside Farm

Hillside Farm's Bill and Hannah Pearce, a father - daughter team, grow poultry and pork on pasture in East Albany. Their chickens and turkeys are raised on daily fresh pasture, and processed on-farm by growers who care deeply about the health of their livestock, consumers, and the greater community. 

Bill and Hannah rely on their poultry to improve the soils and thereby the grass in the pasture, which then improves the quality of their poultry. The poultry manure not only adds a lot of nitrogen to the soil, but is also 2% calcium by weight. With Vermont soils being very acidic, the calcium in the manure aids in plant growth by stabilizing the cell walls of the plants, assists the plants in nutrient uptake, and boosts soil structures by aerating and promoting root growth. It also saves time by preventing the need for a lime supplement (which is used to reduce the acidity of soils). Bill and Hannah have seen the pasture transition from lower quality swamp grasses and to a nutrient-dense, phenomenal quality hay since beginning to pasture poultry on the land, first in 2010, and then as a farm business between 2012-2015.

Hannah lived out west and then moved back to Vermont in 2014, without any plans to become a farmer. She started working with her dad in 2015, and then in 2016, Hillside Farm was instrumental in updating Vermont’s 2007 “Chicken Bill” (6 V.S.A. 3312), which increased small-scale on-farm poultry processing exemptions from from 1,000 birds to 5,000 birds. Bill and Hannah worked with the then-senator, Bobby Star, who was head of the Senate Agriculture Committee at the time. Bill wanted to farm with his daughter but needed to increase the bird count to make the farm viable. The law passed, which allowed Hannah to purchase half of the business. The law was then ratified to include an exemption for processing poultry on-farm, without needing to slaughter off-site at a USDA facility. In spring 2024, H-603 expanded on-farm poultry processing even more to include cutting birds on the farm, allowing them to sell pre-cut meat at their on-site farm store and direct-to-consumer at market. Read more about Hillside Farm and the expansion of this law here. 

Hillside Farm rotationally grazes chickens with mobile coops on skids throughout the season from early April through October. Chicks are sourced from a hatchery in western Pennsylvania and trucked up to Hillside Farm weekly. They have found that trucking the chicks is less stressful than shipping them through the USPS and results in fewer mortalities. Chicks start in the brooder shed and are then moved out to pasture, where they forage on fresh grass daily. Hillside processes 250-300 birds per week with a crew of 6-7 staff. Batches of chickens remain together and are raised to eight weeks, foraging on lush pasture daily before going to slaughter. Hillside Farm raises around 300-350 turkeys over eighteen weeks during summer, and finishes them in early October to the freezer for fall sales. Lastly, they raise about ten feeder pigs over the summer to be slaughtered in the fall so they are able to offer pork for sale.