Newton & Whiting Farm

FAQ

• Why do you live on a hobby farm?
  • I grew up in rural PA, with ex-Old Order Mennonite, ex-Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch family: I’ve been growing fruit and vegetables since I was six years old. My dad’s family all farmed various crops and I know the cost of goods – it makes my brain squeak to pay grocery store prices for heirloom tomatoes and raspberries when I can grow them by the bucketload.
  • Farming isn’t cheap overall, but once you invest the capital, it’s like an insurance policy against being broke and hungry. If you’ve never been broke and hungry and unable to afford grocery stores, count your lucky stars, good for you. I’ve been glad of the produce, chickens and dairy more than once, as have friends and family who were down on their luck.
  • It’s good exercise. Every day that the universe sees fit to let me live, I have to haul water, throw hay bales, pull weeds, scythe grass, haul sacks of layer pellets, spread pine shavings, train livestock dogs, shovel compost, split firewood, flush and fill water troughs and and and…
• Is this your full time job?
  • No, my 9-5 consists of gently complaining at people overseas to manufacture things better and approving paperwork, mostly. Sometimes I make a PowerPoint deck.
• Why do you have goats?
  • Weed whacking and fiber. They eat the poison ivy that is a plague on this part of the country, and the more invasive but non-poisonous weeds like curly dock, cleavers and multiflora rose. Slightly over half the goats are cashmere producing and I collect the fiber in spring, wash it, card it and blend it with mohair and other fibers, and make incredibly warm fancy sweaters out of it.
  • Some of the goats are Alpines and Saanens, which are dairy breeds, and I use them for milk about six months of the year.
  • They’re pretty cute. They enjoy scritches, they wag their tails and know their names and basic commands like a slightly stupid dog.
• Do you sell goat cheese?
  • No, getting certified as a dairy in Massachusetts would require a very different kind of barn construction. The barn is listed as part of the historic property, so tearing it down is not really an option.
• Do you sell raw milk?
  • Absolutely not, no. I went to UMass for microbiology and I used to work for Steris – where part of my job was vapor sterilization of large buildings including food processing plants. TRUST ME, you don’t want raw milk. Or tuberculosis. Or brucellosis. Or campylobacter. Or listeriosis. Or any of the other zoonotic diseases known to be passed in raw milk. What did people do before there was pasteurization? They died. Listen, I know the world isn’t great right now, but I for one want to outlive my enemies.
  • When I am milking goats, I do actually pasteurize the milk before using it for cheese or yogurt. Pasteurization is literally just heating the milk up for a few minutes, below boiling temperature – that’s it, I put it in the microwave for a few minutes to heat it up because that’s enough to kill bacteria. Pasteurization has been used since the 19th century successfully to keep folks safe from bacterial diseases that people used to regularly die of. There is literally over a century of proof that it is safe and protects people’s health.
  • Further rants about the lack of sanitation in raw milk facilities and food processing in general available upon request.