Asa Baer and Caitlin Bingham joined The Grey Barn in the Spring of 2017. Originally from Vermont, they moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 2015. After a few years of heavy concrete work Asa, who had worked on dairy farms much of his life, wanted to move from concrete work back to milking cows. Luckily for both of us he and Caitlin moved to the farm and joined our crew. Over the past several years The Grey Barn has grown quite a bit and the infrastructure for our dairy & beef herds including our pastures, woods and barns were beginning to be over taxed. Each year our customers as us for more local food than this land can produce. When Covid 19 hit our demand skyrocketed even further.

Since Asa began as our Livestock and Forages Manager he and Eric have dreamt of a Grey Barn North. A place in Vermont that Asa and Caitlin could manage allowing the animals to be shared across farms and give the island more of the regionally local food it needs. Over the years Eric and Asa would travel to Vermont looking over different farms and talking about different ideas. Then, in the fall of 2020, a farm came on the market that was only 10 minutes from Caitlin’s parents home in the town Caitlin grew up in. How wonderful would it be to take over this farm, that was already certified organic, right where Caitlin’s Family family lives?

April 1st of 2021 this dream became a reality. Introducing Knob Hill Farm. Two hundred and fifty acres of pasture and woods allow The Grey Barn and Knob Hill Farm to work cooperatively. Knob Hill raises The Grey Barn’s dairy heifers, allowing us to keep a closed herd. This also takes the pressure off of our team and land here on the island. Knob Hill raises about half of our pork. This pork is then made into our dried sausages created by Babette’s Table. A women owned butchery in Vermont.

Starting a farm, of course, presents many challenges by working together in managing land, sharing costs and equipment, it will generally make all of our lives easier and be easier on the land. Throughout this process I’ve found that desire echoed countless times, in many variations, by farmers across the country. It’s clear that we face common challenges. It’s also clear that by working together, we get more than just a solution to a problem: we get solidarity.

Each farm has its own enterprise-specific capital needs, ongoing costs, and considerations for feasibility and management. Farming collaboratively allows The Grey Barn and Knob Hill to pool resources and work together for mutual benefit. It requires cooperation, compromise, and trust.

Wendell Berry, speaking at the 2013 Young Farmers Conference, remembered how his neighbor used to say with pride, “I’ve worked on every farm on this road, and never earned a cent!” The tradition of sharing labor between farms has changed with increased mechanization and the loss of many farms and farm families, but lives on in new, adapted ways.

We hope you are as excited and happy as we are to be a part of a regional food system. I visited Caitilin, Asa and Abe over the winter to see how things are going. Eric's gets to see them every month and so Abe, their two year old, knows Eric better than me. Visiting with them and walking the 250 acres was pure joy. So happy to have them as part of our family.

Introducing our Sister Farm Knob Hill Farm in Marshfield, Vermont