Adams Farm Receiving $50K Grant to Help Expand
ADAMS, Mass. — Burnett's Farm has received a $50,000 state grant to help expand and propel it into the future, and continue the legacy past generations have established.
Those with a passion for farming know the toils of competing with the goliath industrial farms backed by reams of dollars from those who have never dug dirt out from underneath their fingernails.
This is a story the owners of Burnett's Farm know well. But along with a bit of luck and a lot of persistence, the East Road farm is receiving some aid that will breathe new life into its operation.
Fourth-generation farmer Jane Burnett said the farm, which is in the Agricultural Preservation Restriction Program, received a slice of a $400,000 grant given to five farms throughout the state through the APR Improvement Program. The $50,000 will be used to build a garage to store and maintain equipment.
Sixth-generation farmer and Burnett's grandson Zachary Bantle said the garage will help lower maintenance costs and allow the equipment to be worked on indoors instead of on the ground.
"It's huge, and it's an opportunity that probably would have only come 10 years down the road," Bantle said. "It is something that you dream about that will help you move forward, but being able to take that step and get some help is really important."
Burnett's daughter and fifth-generation farmer Carrie Garivaltis said the grant is also tagged with state technical assistance for forestry planning, beef cattle, business plan development, and logo and Web page design.
Bantle said he is most excited about the technical assistance and working with professionals who know a lot about farming.
"Starting a beef herd initially was moved way out, but now it has moved right in front of us," he said. "It is expanding the business. My grandfather milked cows here for all of his life and it has always been a dairy farm and it slowed down when he got sick so we are trying to get it back to something."
Burnett said to keep up in today's market, the farm needs to diversify and rely less on dairy. She said the price of milk has fallen to near where it was in the 1980s.
She said this ability to adapt to market change has kept the farm alive. She said her husband, Douglas Burnett Jr., who died in 2013, was a visionary and often had business plans years out with hopes of securing the farm for future generations.
"He wanted to plant Christmas trees," she said. "They wouldn't be ready until the kids were teenagers, but he was looking at 10 to 20 years down the road at things that would benefit the future."
Douglas Burnett's grandfather and great-grandfather purchased the farm in 1911 after farming in Savoy. Jan Burnett said the farm has always been firmly placed in the community.
"We always sold stuff here and we always encouraged school kids to come see where the milk came from," she said. "We used to get the kindergartners to come to the farm, and they would look into the big tank of milk and see it swirl. They thought milk just came from the super market."
Bantle said this element of education is important to him and he would like to continue it. More importantly, he wants to connect people to where their food comes from – or where it should come from.
"To be able to intertwine farming with the general population is important to me because even something as small as a garden I think people underestimate the power of," he said. "You may not be able to raise a cow, but if I can show you how to raise a small garden and show you where you can get good food instead of buying stuff with 'stay fresh' on it, I'm happy."
He added that it is important to understood how our food is produced and to know every animal is happy, fed well, and handled with care. Part of that is reinforcing that food doesn't have to come from the supermarket – you can get it straight from the farm.
Modern farming is much different than it was in the past and farmers, too, cannot afford to be uninformed, he said.
"You can't be a dumb farmer anymore," he said. "You are running a business just like anyone else, and you have to be on the cutting edge ... It is a low-tolerance industry, and those little tweaks make all the difference. If you feed a cow a pound more grain you have to know where it is making you money and where it's not. It's not as easy as just feeding them until they are fat or not hungry."
Burnett said the farm has gone through many changes over the years and has both struggled and thrived.
"Sometimes they milked, sometimes they did firewood, and sometimes they had to work off of the farm to supplement income," Burnett said. "So you do what you have to do to keep the farm going."
She added that the family has a great passion for the farm, its legacy, and tradition and every generation has made it a priority to keep the farm in the family.
"It was my husband's passion for sure and it became mine, slowly but surely," Burnett said. "It wasn't a good option or even an option to let it go when he passed away because it was now a part of me. Luckily my daughter and grandson seem to have the same passion, and you have to have that passion because ... it is seven days a week. It's not always eight hours a day, sometimes it's 12."
Bantle agreed with his grandmother's sentiment, saying he would have it no other way.
"Christmas morning the animals have to eat and it doesn't matter," he said. "It's a tough gig. Every night you have to bring the animals in at 7, but I have fun doing it."
Burnett said she is confident that the farm will always stay in the family's hands and hoped future generations will have the same passion and protectiveness of the farm.
Bantle reaffirmed this wish.
"It's not something I could imagine seeing go away, and if I sit and think about it I couldn't imagine the farm not being in the family," he said. "My mom lives right across the street and I live right across the street, and I could not imagine living there and seeing someone else here. It just wouldn't be right so I think we have to continue what we started."
Tags: agricultural restriction, agriculture, dairy, farming,
