Holiday Brook Farm offers sustainably-grown foods

DALTON – To get to Holiday Brook Farm, one crosses a small bridge over Wahconah Brook and drives up an unpaved road to the farm store and other buildings.

Then, wherever the eye turns, there are picturesque vistas.

Being at Holiday Brook Farm is like standing in the middle of a picture postcard come-to-life.

Outside the farm store, varieties of squash nestle around the bottoms of plant-filled half-barrels.

Hills and trees, fields and sky, and even a body of water that reflects the lavish countryside can all be found at the farm.

Jesse Robertson-Dubois, 37, and his wife, Desiree, 39, manage the Holiday Brook Farm, which is owned by four members of the Crane family, Carrie, Dicken, Mary and Tim. It’s been in the Crane family for four generations.

Crane and Company in Dalton is a well-known paper company and one of the last family-owned paper mills in the United State.

The managers of Holiday Brook Farm are first-generation farmers. Both Mr. and Mrs. Robertson-Dubois attended Hampshire College in Amherst. He was studying the history of land use and she early American women’s history.

When they were offered the opportunity to manage Holiday Brook Farm in 2007,  they enthusiastically accepted it.

Managers like making a difference

“We love working for a community and making a difference in our small part of the world,” Mrs. Robertson-Dubois said.

She said she also likes helping people learn to eat better quality food, such as beef, lamb and pork from animals that are born and raised right on the farm.

“I love working outdoors and making good food for people,” her husband said.

The hard-working managers with a mission are the parents of three children, Morgan, 9, Elspeth, 6, and blonde-haired Gwyneth, 16 months old. They are all growing up on the farm.

Holiday Brook Farm produces nine acres of vegetables, 600 gallons of maple syrup from 2,000 taps, grass-fed meats, compost, hay, firewood and other farm products for the community, according to the farm’s brochure.

Holistic farm practices are followed. For instance, foods on the farm are grown without harmful chemicals.

A huge number of herbs and vegetables are grown at Holiday Brook Farm, from carrots, eggplant and garlic to green beans, kale, lettuce, peppers, radishes, tomatoes and so much more, including zucchini.

A CSA farm

Holiday Brook is a CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm. This means it is a partnership between a farm and its customers. 

A total of 130 families currently buy shares of the farm’s harvest, and additional shares are available. Customers receive fresh produce as well as meat from  grassfed beef and lamb and pasture-raised pork. For share prices, contact the farm at (413) 684-0444 or check the farm’s extensive website.

The farm’s brochure notes it offers “sustainably-grown foods for your health and happiness.”

“Many members find that being part of a CSA encourages them towards healthier eating habits,” the brochure states. “Food choices also affect our economy, communities and environment. In a world of industrial food production, buying local keeps farms, and funds, in your community, sustaining us all.”

Hands and heads together

Dicken Crane is in charge of the farm’s compost, firewood, forest management and other activities and events.

Running an operation like Holiday Brook takes quite a few hands and heads, he said. Everyone at the farm is constantly planning and thinking of how to do things better. They are also constantly adapting to weather changes and other challenges, he said.

Farm originally called Flintstone Farm

Actually, the owners’ great-grandfather, Frederick “Fred” Goodrich Crane, a papermaker by trade, bought three individual farms at the turn of the century and combined them into one, said Dicken Crane.  ­­­­­­­­He called it Flintstone Farm after ­big white boulders that sparked were found on the property.

In the early days, the farm extended past what is now Route 9 and there were 2,500 acres. The original farm had dairy cows, a creamery, a butter house, pigs, sheep, chickens and an orchard.

“My great-grandfather’s real mission was to help other farmers by exploring the use of different breeds of livestock,” Dicken Crane said. His great-grandfather had different kinds of equipment and crops and had the resources to help less fortunate farmers.

Old survey maps show that most of the farm was established by 1911.

Tragedy strikes the farm

The original Fred Crane, after establishing the farm, still kept his hand in Crane and Company. In 1923, just after he was made company president, he died suddenly. It was the same year that Dicken Crane’s father was born.

At one time, Rose Paddock Crane, the owners’ great-grandmother, sold much of the farm as well as the herd to a herdsman, John Cande. She had been left a widow with a gigantic farm operation.

However, dairying became difficult in Massachusetts and, eventually, the Crane family bought back most of the farm, Mr. Crane said.

More information going even further back in the history of the farm can be found on Holiday Brook Farm’s website.

From the looks of things at Holiday Brook Farm, everyone there appears to be  meeting challenges of operating such an enterprise head on, carrying on a strong tradition of family farming as well as making the world a better place in which to live.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on September 27, 2012. Filed under Community News,Food,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry