Valley Bounty: Bostrom Farm keeps it simple, wholesome and fresh

At first glance, Bostrom Farm in Greenfield appears to be a pretty straightforward farming operation: Farmer Kyle Bostrom raises beef cattle and 3-4 acres of mixed vegetables and plants like garden starts, bedding plants and mums.

But with a closer look, Bostrom Farm reveals how complex a seemingly simple farming operation can be.

“The core of the farm is the pasture,” says Bostrom. Maintaining the health of that pasture and the health of the livestock that feed on it is an active process.

“From as early in the season as we can through the fall, we rotate the cows on the pasture every day,” he says. “We have a planting rotation. If I start a patch of grass on June 1, the cows go out to graze there by late July. That’s the same time that I’ll plant fall cover crops which extend the grazing season into November.”

Once winter hits, the cows rely on hay and baleage harvested and dried from Bostrom’s fields during the busy summer months.

“We make all our own feed for the winter, but the goal is to graze as much and for as long as we possibly can. Grazing is crucial,” says Bostrom. “It’s very important to the whole system: the quality of the animal, the environment, the carbon in the soil. If you have cattle on pasture, they’re on the ground, their little hooves are working their fecal matter into the soil and contributing to the soil health. Within the year, we’ll cycle back around to previously grazed paddocks at least twice, maybe three times.”

While specific fields may be rotated through the pasturing system several times a year, the farm as a whole turns on a slower cycle. “We grow vegetables as a cash crop, but growing them is also part of our five- to six-year rotation,” says Bostrom. “When we plant vegetables, it allows that soil to be turned over and worked, and then we can put it back into cover crops and then replant it into pasture. So, the spot where we have veggies now will be triticale (a wheat-rye hybrid) in the fall, grazed in fall and spring, and then we’ll plant festulolium, which is a fescue-rye hybrid that loves cold weather and is super sugary, great feed for the cows. That veg land won’t be turned back into veg for another five years.”

Bostrom Farm vegetables, which include all the classics like summer squash, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes and corn, can be found at their farm stand on Colrain Road in Greenfield. The farm stand is the most recent addition to the business.

“We’ve had produce in our rotations for many years, and we used to do some wholesale to local stores,” says Bostrom. “But now, there are fewer farm stands in Greenfield, so we decided to retail directly from the farm stand. We also do a lot of spring annuals and vegetable starts and things like mums in the fall.”

In addition to the farm stand, the last handful of years have seen a lot of infrastructure investment on the farm. During COVID-19, with the help of a grant through the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, Bostrom built a meat-cutting facility. This allows the Bostrom Farm team to process all their meat on-farm — both beef they raise themselves and pork that is sourced from nearby farms, for now, while Bostrom completes facilities that will enable them to raise pigs on-farm again.

Animals are slaughtered off-farm, and then the farm’s “absolutely wonderful” meat-cutting team transforms it into sausages, bacon, hot dogs and a wide variety of specialty cuts, including special requests from customers. “We have some customers who like their skirt steak trimmed to a certain length or some other specific request and we’ll try to do that for them. Absolutely! We’re small, we can do that,” says Bostrom.

While the farm’s rotational systems may be complex, the focus for their meat products is simplicity. “Diets and trends used to keep me up at night, but now, the biggest concern is to try to make the products as wholesome as possible with as little junk as possible,” says Bostrom. “Our maple bacon is just maple, salt and pepper. Our sausages are just herbs and salt and pepper. We really try to minimize any additional inputs and keep the ingredient list short.”

That said, “we have one kind of out-there specialty,” says Bostrom. “On part of our property, we have a decent supply of spring ramps, so I carefully harvest some every year, and we have a spring ramp sausage. That’s something special that we only have until it runs out.”

This past July, there was a fire in the meat-cutting room, which forced Bostrom to close the meat shop for over a month as the crew cleaned up, rebuilt and replenished their inventory. “We are very blessed to have a wonderful and supportive crew as well as great customers,” says Bostrom. “We were in the middle of our summer CSA when this occurred, and our CSA members offered their time to help and were very grateful when we reopened.”

Customers can purchase Bostrom Farm’s meat fresh or frozen at the farm store, at the Greenfield Farmers’ Market or through the farm’s meat CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which is open for sign-ups now for distributions to begin in February.

“People really like that our meat is fresh and that there’s a connection to how it was raised and to the person who is making the cuts for them,” says Bostrom. “It’s really community-based for everyone. The customers feel that and so do we, as the supplier.”

Claire Morenon is the Communications Manager at CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To find local farm stands with fresh meat and vegetables near you, visit buylocalfood.org.