November 22nd, 2024
By Maya Rappaport
Working in Partnership for Healthier Pastures and Orchards
On a beautiful morning in September, I drove up a dirt road on Mount Warner in Hadley, MA to meet farmers Rachel Haas and Matt Kaminsky, owners and operators of Meadowfed Lamb, a small grass-fed lamb and poultry farm. As I arrived at an old barn, I was greeted by a border collie, a barn cat, and Matt, who was moving pasture for a the farm’s two rams. We talked about sheep farming—which I’d done in Colorado and Maine—while Matt set up fencing.
Matt and Rachel use farming techniques, such as intensively managed grazing, to raise delicious local fare while caring for the health of their farmland. Their farm operates in a close partnership with their landowners, Jonathan Carr and Nicole Blum. The land, Preservation Orchard, is protected under an Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR), meaning it will remain in agricultural use into the future.
In this partnership, which fosters a healthy, integrated farm system, Rachel and Matt raise sheep and chickens while the Nicole and Jonathan grow fruit and nut trees that supply apples and other goods to Carr’s Ciderhouse.
Meadowfed Lamb runs on 30 acres of intensively managed silvopasture nestled into the hillside, a vibrant patch of farmland in a beautiful landscape. Rows of fruit and nut trees, from newly planted saplings to older trees bearing fruit, shade lush pastures full of grasses and leafy plants. It’s clear this habitat thrives; bugs and birds are everywhere.
With the rams now moved into a small square of pasture shaded by an apple tree, both happily munching fresh, tall grass, Matt shared about the strategy he uses to keep the pasture grass grazed to just the right level to be of most benefit to the soil’s health. While Matt moved on to mowing grass with a scythe, my colleague Max Breiteneicher—who has been helping Matt and Rachel with a conservation plan for their land—arrived, followed shortly by Nicole, Jonathan, and Rachel. They greeted each other with hugs and big smiles, then told me about their operations, the partnership between the two businesses, and some of the struggles and successes of farming. It was clear to see that this is a community of farmers who take great pride in supporting one another.
Currently, the Meadowfed Lamb has very little infrastructure. The site lacks electricity and relies on a hand pump well, which means for the past two years, Rachel and Matt have been hauling buckets of water by hand up the steep hill (though the world-class views of the Connecticut River Valley made it a little easier to bear).
But now with the help of Max, the Meadowfed Lamb team is implementing a conservation plan funded by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The plan includes permanent fencing and a solar-powered pumping system to bring water up the hill, saving time and resources while expanding and improving their grazing program. The plan also includes about eight acres of new silvopasture tree plantings.
As we winded through the tall grasses and newly planted fruit trees on the land, Rachel told me about their chickens while I did my best to not upset their livestock guardian dog. As we moved on through the mature orchards to the top of the hill, Rachel and Max caught up on the status of their NRCS project. The Meadowfed Lamb team emphasized how Max’s help with planning, deadlines, and navigating the NRCS process has been key to securing funding that will sustain their young business.
With these upgrades, the Meadowfed Lamb team will have more time to focus on growing their operation, solidifying their place in the local market, and continuing to thrive! They shared,
It’s a blessing to know that there are resources available to help out new farmers like us trying out promising yet unconventional methods like silvopasture. If we have the resources to take the next steps in scaling and further developing our operations, we hope that the lessons we learn and the improvements to our own farm will help us inspire more farmers and allow us to feed a larger share of the community.
Projects like these are bringing historic amounts of funding to small farmers, made possibly with help from conservation planners like Max. To him, NRCS projects are more than just technical support—they offer a chance to uplift farmers and help them build resilient operations:
“[This is] a great opportunity to bring diverse and relatively underserved operations under the NRCS’s goals and demonstrate how they can benefit our land. Ideally, what we’re doing is improving soil health in as many ways as possible throughout the region. On a more human level, what I think is an enormous benefit of this is extending attention, care, and focus to livestock producers.”
See the Meadowfed Lamb team’s NRCS conservation plan in action
In his role as AFT conservation planner for the Meadowfed Lamb team, Max makes site visits to the farm to help Matt and Rachel create and implement their conservation plans. Recently, Max spent a day getting his hands dirty with the team, planting silvopasture trees in an exciting first stage of their conservation plan. Max reflects that seeing the project begin to take tangible form is more than just a technical process, noting, “The care for livestock producers is already in action.”
On the first day of planting silvopasture trees at the farm, the NRCS Cultural Resources team, a key partner in this effort, oversaw operations to ensure that the land’s cultural significance is respected, carefully monitoring for any artifacts as the farmers worked. Alongside a team of helpers, the Meadowfed crew planted 100 bare-root trees, each one carefully mulched and protected by sleeves. By afternoon, the task was complete, and the forecasted rain promised to help the newly planted roots take hold. Max continues:
“Soon the roots of these trees will spread through the loamy sand in search of water and nutrients, helping to hold and deepen the pasture soils on this prime farmland, and to facilitate its regenerative management by these young, dedicated farmers.”
For farmers like Rachel and Matt, moments like these carry the promise of a farm system that continues to grow and thrive into the future. By accessing funds like those available through the NRCS, with the help of planners like Max, farmers at all stages can surpass barriers to nourishing their lands and communities.