Kinne Brook Farm
Contact: Bart Niswonger and Eliza Lake
Address: 481 Kinnebrook Road Worthington, MA, 01098
Phone: 413-238-8001
Website: www.KinneBrookFarm.com
About Us
We feel very lucky to have land with which we can work, on which we can grow, and for which we are responsible.
We love farming, and feel what we are doing is important, because we can take a little piece of the earth and try to leave it better than we found it.
Although Eliza’s family has taken good care of the farm over the last 40 years, we hope to make it consistently more productive and healthier every year through new land management practices like management intensive rotational grazing and silvopasturing.
Practices
Our herd is grazed exclusively on grass and other forage, augmented only by hay in the winter. We do not use any antibiotics or hormones. The cattle are given free access to OMRI certified organic mineral salt and kelp. We move every few days giving them access to the most succulent and nutritious grass, distributing their manure throughout the fields as fertilizer. Manure and bedding that accumulates in the winter is composted and then spread back on the fields, so as to maintain the soil’s fertility.
We are proud that as a result of these practices our beef cattle have been certified as both humanely raised by Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) and as Certified Grassfed by A Greener World (AGW)! The AWA program audits and certifies that family farms are raising their animals humanely, outdoors on pasture. This certification declares that our animals are being raised and slaughtered in accordance with the AWA requirements, which the World Society for the Protection of Animals has called the “most stringent” animal welfare standards in the US. Annual audits by experts in the field cover birth to slaughter, inspecting both the farm and the slaughterhouse. The Certified Grassfed designation is conducted by AWA on behalf of AGW, and declares that our animals are raised on a 100% grass and forage diet, raised outdoors on pasture or range, and managed according to the highest welfare and environmental standards on an independent family farm.