07/04/2016
Snowdance Farm began when we, with our two small children, left New York City for our country home and eighty acres in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. We wanted to raise the healthiest children possible as well as improve our overall quality of life, so we decided to raise chickens.
When asked why chickens? Marc joked, "because chickens are small enough that if things go really wrong, we can solve our problem with a big garbage bag!" Since our farm was a weekend home, we did not have any barns or infrastructure to get started. As a result, we followed the method popularized by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm, using portable electric fencing and moving the chickens daily. Despite our misgivings, nothing went 'really wrong’, in fact things went really right! We had wonderful survivability of our first batch of broilers, we could not believe how good they tasted, and on our first run into New York City to sell our birds to restaurants we left with an order for 160 birds per week!
We moved up the food chain by adding goats ("It's like a small cow, but you can put it in the back of your jeep and take it to the vet if necessary"), sheep, pigs and eventually real cows. Considering that Marc's favorite meal has always been meat with a side of meat, raising livestock seemed a perfect fit.
And life on the farm has shaped our family in innumerable ways. Spending as much time with our children as we have, with the ability to share so many experiences and explore new adventures together on a regular basis, has created a strong bond based on mutual respect between us. We often joke to the children that they get quantity time from us, lots of it, but the truth is it's been of unparalleled quality too. Hard work, a sense of responsibility, community, integrity, humility and caring are not unique to life on a farm, but living on one is a sure way to live and teach those values to your children. And we are grateful every day for the life we've shared together.
