Community Supported Agriculture for the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont

Join the Farm

Besides growing vegetables for the CSA, we also grow/raise/produce chicken, lamb, pork, and maple syrup. These items are sold separately from the CSA share itself, though most everything is sold to the CSA members, who have first choice. We usually send emails out throughout the season to arrange orders, but if you already know you’re interested in signing up for some of the meat, you can email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at any time. (Syrup is sold a la carte in the barn while supplies last.)

Chicken. We raise Cornish rock roasters on pasture, moving the roof and fence each day to fresh ground. The finished birds usually end up in the four- to eight-pound range, and we charge $3.50 per finished pound.

Lamb. We keep a flock of Navajo-Churro sheep year ‘round - an heirloom breed from the American southwest that is considered a “breed of concern” (very few animals) by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. We figure that Sunrise can help the cause by raising this unusual (and good looking) breed. Freezer lambs are available in late October and usually weigh 25 to 35 pounds (finished weight) and cost approximately $7.99 per finished pound. (For legal reasons, we officially charge by the “hanging weight” (the weight of the carcass when it arrives at the butcher’s), which is usually half again heavier, and we only sell whole animals.)

Pork. We raise approximately 10 pigs per year, buying Tamworth piglets (another rare and unusual breed) from Nancy LaRowe’s Hogwash Farm in Norwich. The pigs sleep in portable pig shelters and root around in fresh pasture as we move the shelters around. Freezer pork is available in mid-November, usually weigh around 160 pounds (finished weight), and cost $5.99 per finished pound. (For legal reasons, we officially charge by the “hanging weight” (the weight of the carcass when it arrives at the butcher’s), which is usually 20 percent heavier, and we only sell whole animals.)

About raising meat. When I first starting apprenticing as a farmer, I was a vegetarian, primarily because I was appalled at the way farm animals are treated in the industrial food system. But as I dove into the details of farming, I discovered that vegetarianism was a made-up concept - an invention of people in urban settings who buy food in supermarkets. Down on the farm, there is no defensible distinction between plants and animals.

For one thing, most of the animals on a farm live deep in the soil. There is no way to grow a vegetable without wreaking havoc on their lives and habitat. On the more macro scale, where people care about fuzzy-faced animals, there is also no way to grow a vegetable without trapping, poisoning, killing, or, at the very least (on a friendly organic farm like Sunrise) excluding via fence the deer, coyote, fox, woodchucks, moose, raccoons, skunks, and other “charismatic megafauna” that would otherwise inhabit the farm and eat the vegetables.

Even beyond that, on an organic farm like Sunrise, plants and animals do best together; neither can be grown as efficiently without the other. Animals eat plant waste, till the soil, fertilize the ground, and create concentrated protein on slopes too steep for cultivation. Plants, meanwhile, provide inexpensive food for animals, turn their manure into fertility, and produce still-more vegetables using only locally-produced fertilizer.

Once I’d reached this conclusion, I realized that the ‘how’ of raising animals became the main concern: if animals are going to be a part of Sunrise, how can we best treat them? Good food, sunlight, free access to pasture, and fresh water are all crucial, as is TLC and paying attention to their needs. We want the animals to be able to fully realize their specific animal nature, be that rooting around in the ground (pigs), pecking and playing in the dust (chickens), or moving across a pasture in tight flock formation (sheep.)

Ultimately, then, the key question is how the animals are going to die. For me as a farmer, the only defensible approach is for the moment of death to be both instant and unexpected. And to achieve this, the best approach has been for me to learn to do it myself so that the animals can remain home, on the farm, among friends, right up through the end. For the chickens, we do all the processing and butchering here on the farm. For the lambs and pigs, we take the carcasses to Green Mountain Smokehouse in Windsor, Vermont, for butchering, smoking (ham and bacon), and packaging.

A note on organic: our animals are not certified organic because we do not feed them organic feed. I prefer to purchase our winter hay from Maple Row Farm, our neighbor (the big white dairy barn) on Route 5, where the Wright family manages their hay fields beautifully without using herbicides. I prefer to buy our grain from White’s Dairy Supply in North Hartland, just down the road from Sunrise, because it is a local, family-owned business and because the grain they sell (Poulin) is from a Vermont-based company and does not have any additives or medications.

In addition to these items that we raise ourselves, we are planning to offer eggs, beef, and cheese from neighboring farms this summer. More on this as the season approaches.