Who We Are
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Welcome to the farm! We are excited to share our mindset of full-circle sustainability by growing delicious, pasture-raised meat. BOTL Farm specializes in pastured pork, goat, lamb, rabbit, eggs, and honey. We strive to make our farm self-supporting by maintaining breeding stock
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Farm History and Practices
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In 2011 we started the farm in New Jersey -- run by wife and husband team, Danielle and Nick. As farmers we started with growing vegetables in gardens that were too large a percentage of our then-city plot to be considered 'just a garden.' From the beginning we were interested in sustainable management practices, including seed saving and soil management. Through avid, nuturing composting the garden could be run without fertilizers or pesticides. Even as our 'garden' grew bigger we continued practicing no-till methods, as killing worms is really sad and we prefer them alive, doing work to improve our soil quality. Experimenting with the planting good-bug-attracting flowers and herbs, we cut down on pests (except for that one year with Japanese beetles [that was real bad]). In the following year we began planting and grafting a handful of fruit trees and berry plants. One of our favorite things about these is that they don't need replanting every year and produce reliably.
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In 2013 we acquired honey bees. As there is a declining population of honey bees worldwide (and bees are wonderful), we thought this would be the next best step to bring the garden/farm closer to full-circle sustainability. Honey bee proximity to our plants provides our own (and surrounding!) farms with pollination. Similar to our produce, we do not treat the bees (except for that one time) and let them naturally select new queens (unless the queen freezes to death like that other time). This provides the bees with the most natural living conditions, allowing them to produce the highest quality honey.
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In 2015 we made the jump to being meat farmers by adding meat rabbit production. We practice a Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing Colony system to raise the rabbits. Basically this means that all the rabbits live together in a mobile hutch. The hutch is surrounded by electric fencing and the rabbits can enter or leave the hutch whenever they like. They were mainly fed grass with supplements from our gardens and farm produce scraps. The electric fencing and mobile hutch gets moved every few days to new pasture. This allows for an even distribution of manure across the ground and constant access for the rabbits to feed on fresh grass. With our pastures having a large variety of grasses, legumes, weeds, herbs, flowers, and plants this allows for the rabbits to self-select what they want to eat. It most naturally resembles the foraging of wild rabbits.
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At this point with a giant garden, an area for growing grain, rabbits, bees, kiwi trees, apples trees, and berry plants, our city-plot acreage was maxed out. The next step was to buy a large piece of land on which to seat a permanent farm. In 2016 we 'bought the farm' aka purchased 41 acres of overgrown, fallow land with a house built in 1820 located in Ashford, Connecticut, affectionately known as the 'quiet corner' of Connecticut. In seperate but equally frightening trips, we moved our rabbits and bee hives up to the new farm, along with our personal possessions and an aburdly large number of other things, some of which we still fight about. That said, bootstrapping a 40-acre farm requires lots and lots of equipment.
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2017 and 2018 mark the beginning of establishing our permanent farm. This involves two large infrastructure projects, installing a mile of physical/electric perimeter fence and building a barn. We also welcomed our first flock of chickens to the farm and began the long road of learning how to incubate chicken eggs. We look forward to integrating more animal species on our farm as things develop.
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Moving right along, the eventual goal of our farm is to rotationally graze multiple animals one after another (goats, sheep, rabbits, pigs, and finally chickens) over the same pasture. This allows the pasture to be used to its fullest as each animal grazes for different plants/bugs. We feel this diversity on our farm is key to full-circle sustainability.
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About the Farmers
Danielle Larese
Danielle took an academic route to life: after getting degrees in Chemical Physics and Mathematics from Michigan State University, she went on to graduate school in Theoretical Molecular Physics at Yale University. There she taught for two years while completing four years of fundamental physics research, which today gives her the ability to sift through traditional methods, experimental studies, and crazy ideas to quantitatively look at the outcomes of projects and farming experiments. During grad school she held a second job to support herself: working nights at a local bar, where she started at the door, was promoted to bartender, and ended up as a general manager. In this capacity, she managed a crew of over 25 employees working to satisfy over 1,500 customers in a single night. Following graduate studies she traveled around the world, visiting farms in India, Ecuador, Costa Rica, England, Wales, Hawaii, and other places. After 1.5 years of that nonsense, it became necessary to become employed, so she began a post-graduate fellowship position at the FDA doing computation modeling on food safety in the event of a nuclear accident. In 2018 she transitioned to a semi-permanent position involving the critical scientific review of some federal data products. This combination of academic rigor with gritty get-it-done managing jobs lends an astounding resource on the farm. However, since she works full-time off the farm she is referred to as the 'secondary farmer.'
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Nick Weinstock
Nick and his family have a productive history as small business owners, investors, and planners. After getting his Construction Management degree from Michigan State University in 2009, Nick returned to join the family construction company fulltime as a general contractor and supervisor. This work involves overseeing construction projects from their inception to the last sweeping up after construction is complete. It requires highly developed contracting, scheduling, and negotiating skills as the general contractor is responsible for coordinating workflow between tenants, land owners, building engineers, governmental inspectors, and anyone else with a stake in the project. This work also provides Nick with a keen eye for how to go about repairs, upgrades, and improvements along with a good sense of how much these things cost. Coupled with a working knowledge of most construction trades (carpentry, masonry, electrical, etc.), this provides a valuable asset on a working farm. Nick is not only handy in the sense of being able to fix things, but in being young while already having over 12 years of experience in running a business, building and maintaining customer relationships, and long-term financial planning. Nick is pleased to be a fulltime farmer at BOTL Farm, referred to as our 'primary farmer.'
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Pup - the farm dog
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Pup joined the farm in 2017. She is a mix of Lab, Australian Shepherd, and American Staffordshire Terrier. As a rescue dog who was caught as a stray, we don't believe she has any previous farm-dog experience, so she's learning on the job. So far her duties including eating chicken feet and other less-than-best-selling animal parts, letting the farmers know when a chicken got out and is hiding under a trailer, hunting snakes, hunting possums, and fighting bees. We look forward to her growing up enough (and maybe graduating to the name "Dog") to stop fighting bees. She rarely wins. See below.
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Future of the Farm
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Beyond just raw meat, egg, and honey products, we are looking to expand our personal interests of charcuterie and canning. This would include eventually licensing a commercial kitchen and meat processing facility. Any 'waste' products during slaughter easily turn into delicious canned stock, and scrap trimming meat becomes mouth-watering sausage! An on-farm wood-fired oven will provide fresh bread and pizza for farm parties.
Our other big, big dream is to open a beer brewery onsite at our farm. Here at BOTL Farm we love beer, and have been enthusiastic homebrewers since Nick turned 21. The brewery would include a small restaurant which (duh) would serve our farm products in a delightfully farm-to-face-hole way (with sausage and pizza, you can skip the fork/table!). |
pasture pork - cage free rabbit - soy-free, corn-free, gmo-free eggs - grain free, grass fed lamb and goat
Westford Village, Ashford CT
Westford Village, Ashford CT