Codman chickens stroll and roost in their dust-bath holes. See more photos in gallery below. (Photo by Alice Waugh)
By Alice Waugh
Lots of fresh air, lying around in the warm sun or cool shade, munching on fresh grass in a spacious field, a change of scenery every few days—what more could an animal ask for?
Horizons have expanded for Codman Community Farms livestock since Pete Lowy took over as farm manager in early 2016. Human visitors have also noticed some changes, including a major expansion of the farm store and—ironically—fewer animals to be seen in and around the familiar white barns.
When visitors see the mostly empty coops and pens, “they say, ‘Oh, you’re not farming anymore?'” Lowy said. “Everyone hates the term ‘petting zoo,’ but it was sort of like that before—there were a few animals here and there, but it wasn’t really a working farm. Our challenge is conveying how this is better for the quality of the land and the livestock.”
Making the farm a going concern
By using new equipment such as a large moveable cattle shade and lightweight electric fencing, he’s been able to go beyond CCF’s 18 acres and utilize a total of about 80 acres for grazing livestock in various locations around town. Now, instead of a henhouse with a few dozen chickens, this summer there were more than 1,000 laying hens and 600 meat chickens puttering around off Codman Road and Old Concord Road, 125 turkeys on the north side of Codman Road, 80 pigs (mostly in the Van Leer field on Old Sudbury Road), and 26 Red Devon beef cattle in three different meadows—one of which includes a habitat for bobolinks.
The lower barn was converted earlier to an enlarged and modernized facility for washing and packing the 70 dozen eggs that those 1,000 hens lay each day. Just this week, workers began framing and insulating part of the space so it can be used for this year-round. Other recent additions to the farm include an energy-efficient walk-in freezer and several fruit orchards and plots for rhubarb, raspberries, tomatoes, kale and chard.
Some of these improvements are being funded by grants from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and Lincoln’s Ogden Codman Trust as well as private donations. In the past year, $100,000 has been invested in infrastructure including the portable fencing, new water lines, a greenhouse for the chickens in the winter, tractors and other equipment. However, CCF’s operations are not subsidized by the town, which is responsible only for the upkeep on the buildings. Money to lease conservation land, buy and feed livestock, maintain the land, and pay Lowy and assistant farm manager Jared Martin has to come largely from sales of meat, eggs and produce.
While many of these items are sold in the CCF store, local restaurants including Lincoln Kitchen/Trail’s End and 80 Thoreau in Concord now buy eggs, while Moody’s in Waltham buys stewing hens to make chicken stock and other products. The store itself has new glass-front refrigerators as well as a high-tech self-service checkout. Customers scan bar codes corresponding to what they’re buying and then use a touchscreen to pay via credit card or ApplePay—though leaving cash in a paper envelope is still an option.
The first stop on a tour via electric golf cart and pickup truck was the vegetable garden and high-density apple orchard between the barns and the Codman Estate. In modern practice, fruit trees are planted very close together, clipped to trellises, and pruned aggressively to yield more fruit per acre than a traditional orchard.
This fall’s yield also included pumpkins, winter squash and a few potatoes; Lowy hopes to plant more spuds next spring. None of the produce is sold to outside buyers, however’ “it’s just to round out the products we have here,” he said. “One of the keys to successful farming is being diversified.”
A herd of cows grazes on a field next to the solar and septic facilities for Lincoln Woods. Like most of the other livestock, the cows are moved en masse every few days to a new section when the farmers pick up and relocate areas of flexible electric fencing (some of it solar-powered) within the meadow. Moving the animals frequently means that they always have fresh grass, and the field can recover in stages while also getting fertilized evenly over time, thanks to their four-legged guests.
Although it’s better for the land and animals, this technique is more labor-intensive than keeping livestock in larger fixed fields. Lowy and Martin have to move the fencing and animals themselves, and they also need to keep the section edges trimmed, because wet grass touching the electric fence above will cause a short circuit. It also requires mental work, since each spot has unique amounts of rocks, slope, and wetness.
“You have to keep it all in your head and know what you have to do each time, and what fields are best for what,” Lowy said.
Fowl play in the fields
Chickens populate the field on the south side of Codman Road near Route 126. Inside their fenced area are feeders, a moveable water tank, and a coop on wheels where they can take shelter and lay their eggs. Despite the fencing, the birds and their eggs would be easy prey for coyotes, fisher cats, and raccoons, but they have protection in the form of Toby. He’s an Anatolian shepherd, a type of dog specifically bred to guard flocks of poultry, and he’s unperturbed by the dozens of clucking birds trotting around his legs.
Although the chickens don’t tear up the grass as much as cows or pigs, they have another habit that can pose a hazard for the farmers if they don’t keep their eyes on the ground while feeding the birds and collecting their eggs every day—the field is pitted with shallow holes that the chickens scratch out to give themselves a dust bath and then nestle in to rest. But with plenty of room for their excavations, the chickens are more spread out, so they don’t peck each other or spread illnesses as quickly.
Across Codman Road is a field with similar enclosure for turkeys guarded by Andy, another Anatolian shepherd, while a field near Mount Misery is home to the stewing chickens. The dogs live in the enclosures with the birds 24/7, sharing their water and eating raw meat provided by the farmers. Like the birds, they take advantage of the shade provided by the mobile coops to doze on hot summer days.
The dogs aren’t expected to kill predators—they just keep them away by barking and marking boundaries in the way dogs generally do. However, living with the dogs does put some limits on where the birds can be located—if they’re too close to houses, their canine guards will keep the homeowners awake at night with their barking.
Perhaps the most contented livestock this summer were the pigs, who live in the field on the south side of Old Sudbury Road. They spent their time rooting for plants, socializing, and enjoying the muddy spots (“that’s the air-conditioned section,” Lowy joked). “That’s why our animals taste good—they eat great food, get a lot of fresh air, and run around.”
Winter plans
Now that the cold weather is coming, the chickens and Toby will soon be moved to the greenhouse, which will offer shelter and light at least 12 hours a day (so the hens keep laying eggs) but is also open to the outdoors. The turkeys, alas, will not survive the winter—mainly because they’re all spoken for, with Thanksgiving coming up.
As fall deepens into winter, the farmers will bring the pigs back to the main farm to live in a barn and fenced area. The sows will be slaughtered after having their first litter of piglets and the meat brought to smokehouses in Connecticut and Vermont for eventual purchase by New England Charcuterie in Waltham as well as CCF store customers.
The cows will stay outside during the winter in a field closer to the barn. Lowy is installing an insulated frost-free drinker that uses water from the new piping, and they’ll eat the hay that was harvested over the summer. But the best is yet to come for three young cows—Lowy plans to rent a bull to breed the lucky heifers in the front pasture (hopefully at a moment when no children are visiting).
Meanwhile, the store is still expanding its selection with yogurt from Sidehill Farm in Hawley, Mass. (also a supplier for Whole Foods), and bread, baguettes, and bagels from Bread Obsession in Waltham available on Fridays and Saturdays. These products are sold alongside eggs and chicken with the Pete and Jen’s Backyard Birds label, which dates from when Lowy and his wife raised chickens while he was assistant farm manager at Verrill Farm in Concord.
Once winter is here, Lowy and Martin will be freed of their fence- and animal-moving duties and will spend more time doing repairs and maintenance around the farm, cleaning and painting the chicken coops, and other tasks in addition to caring for the livestock. Lowy and the CCF board will also be thinking about how they can illustrate for visitors the operations of a farm that, at first glance, doesn’t seem to have many animals.
The hard work in the fields starts again in the spring, when Lowy has lots of ideas for further reinvigorating Codman Community Farms: more haying and vegetable gardening, more field acreage, more turkeys—and some sheep to join the other livestock. He also hopes to find a part-time coordinator for volunteers, who play a big role in haying, mowing, gardening and other tasks. Once the weather warms, up, “we can always find things for folks to do,” he said.