08/04/2026
Check out the happy cattle grazing in Broad Meadow this week! That breathtaking, iconic view seen to our left as we approach the farm store on the entrance road, Broad Meadow is a great example of our complex land management system, featuring grassland bird habitat, pollinator habitat, historic designed landscape and sometimes production agriculture. We manage our properties to unite the goals of nature, heritage, beauty, and agriculture as best we can in a challenging climate.
Like the Appletons had done for nine generations, care for the land means not only keeping it productive but keeping it healthy and inviting for all. As we discuss plans for Broad Meadow, we are trying to balance these goals in an ever-evolving conversation that respects the historic matrix of cultivated fields, meadows, pastures and woodlands that keep Appleton Farms one of the most historic-looking farms on the North Shore.
To support decades of haymaking in this field, the Appleton Family had dug a network of numerous drainage ditches which still creates a very diverse patchwork of wet, seasonally wet, and dry meadow plant communities and a home for a robust population of marsh pea, a state listed rare plant. This varied patchwork of habitats draws diverse birds including the bobolink, butterflies, insects and other wildlife and serves as a giant sponge of clear water for downstream neighbors. In New England, grasslands rely on pulses of management impact such as mowing and grazing to keep them open and sunny for grasses and flowering forbs and all that depend on them to thrive.
Thank you to our cattle for helping to keep Broad Meadow a special, thriving and diverse grassland meadow!
