Stony Brook Farm
Location:
603 Stony Brook Road Schoharie, NY 12157
Contact:
Bob Comis
518-295-6065
stonybrookfarm at yahoo dot com
Specialty:
Pastured Pork and Grassfed Lamb; Pastured meat chickens and eggs are also available
Bio and History
In 2004, my wife and I moved from downtown Philadelphia, where we had lived for ten years, to a small eighteen acre hillside farm just outside of the village of Schoharie. She and I are both from towns just outside of Syracuse, New York. She grew up on a small horse farm. I grew up playing video games and eating pizza and fast food in a shopping mall.
In the fall of 2004, we got our first laying hens, just five of them, and when I walked out one rainy day and found a perfect little brown egg sitting there, I was hooked. We got two dairy goats about the same time. That spring, the first goat kids were born on the farm. By the time we got our first two pigs in the spring of 2006, I was sure that I had found my calling.
In the spring of 2007, Stony Brook Farm, a diversified pasture-based livestock farm was born. That first year, I raised seven pigs. My wife and I kept one and I sold the rest.
In 2008, I raised thirteen pigs, bumped the laying flock up from a dozen to fifty, raised 100 meat chickens, added a flock of five sheep and raised their lambs for meat, and spent my Saturdays at the Menands farmers market.
Also in 2008, I started a farm blog (see the farm website link), where I keep practical information about the farm, chronicle daily life on the farm, and record my thoughts about local-regional farm and food systems.
Thanks to tremendous support, the farm seems to be on a roll. In 2009, I am raising seventy-five pigs and five hundred meat chickens, and the sheep flock has grown from five ewes to twenty-three. Diversification is important, but taken too far, it can spread the farmer too thin, and the farm economy and the quality of life of the farm animals can suffer, so I am giving up the goats, and I have reduced the laying flock down to twenty hens. I still plan to add beef cows in 2010.
The focus of Stony Brook Farm is equally divided between the quality of life of the animals, stewardship of the land, being a good neighbor and community member, and taste.
Where to find our products:
- Arrangements for whole or half animals can be made via e-mail or telephone, or in person on the farm or at the Menands Farmers Market
- Individual cuts are available for sale on the farm, by appointment
- Individual cuts are also available at the Menands Farmers Market (381 Broadway Ave.) on Saturdays from 8am to 1pm, May through October
What´s in Season?
- Pork, by the whole or half pig, or in individually wrapped cuts -- Year round
- Lamb, by the whole or half lamb, or in individually wrapped cuts -- Fall (whole or half), Year round (cuts)
- Meat chickens, whole only -- Year round, beginning June 2009
- Eggs -- Year round, limited supply, especially in winter.
Other Web Sites: