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“Until the cows come home,” means every afternoon around 2:30 at Appleton Farms, a Trustees of Reservations property in Ipswich. A herd of thirty eight registered Jerseys come home to the dairy barn at Appleton Farms. The oldest continuously operating farm in America, Appleton Farms is definitively a “special place.” The Trustees of Reservations’ mission is to preserve “special places” – the sloping fields ribboned in stonewalls, the crooked fruit trees, the sagging-roofed farmhouses, the stately manses that stand for New England history. The Trustees of Reservations have acquired over 100 special places and 25,000 acres of iconic New England landscape.
Nine generations of Appletons farmed this 1,000 acres of pastures and woodlands since 1636; Joan Appleton, heir-less, in 1998 donated the property and multiple buildings to The Trustees of Reservations, who promised to restore it as a working farm, “to engage people in real work,” Holly Hannaway, TTOR educator, told me.
“Appleton Farms always had a history of a dairy. In the 1860‘s, James Fuller Appleton had been instrumental in introducing the Jersey breed, valued for its high butterfat content, to the United States; we wondered, can we be a small American dairy again?”
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In 2011, Appleton Farms, through the local Puleo dairy, began bottling and distributing its own milk in those cherished glass bottles. But there was a lot of milk; what to do with a surplus? – what dairy farmers have known for centuries: transform it into valuable cheese, all of which can be purchased at the dairy store on the Appleton Farms property, and now at the Boston Public Market. Appleton Farms proudly brings its Jersey treasures, including bottled milk, plain and flavored yogurts, and a selection of aged and semi-soft farmstead cheeses, to the city.
Milk from grass fed cows is considered nutritionally superior to their grain-fed brethren, as cows are basically machines translating the vitamins, linoleic acids (known to fight cancer) and omega 3 fatty acids of local grasses into cold glasses of sweet milk. According to Appleton farms, Jersey cows metabolize hay more efficiently than larger breeds, allowing the highest yield of milk with a smaller carbon footprint. (Appleton Farms, using a variety of methods – solar, electric vehicles, and organic farming – prides itself on being almost carbon-neutral.)
Heads bobbing, hip bones pointy from calving, full udders swaying, the gentle Appleton herd, anxious for the few cups of grain that rewards them as patient milkers, begin their languid march from pasture to barn at sundown, as dairy cows have done in paintings, prose, and poetry since we began eating cheese.
Doe-eyed, soft cupped ears at attention, these chestnut beasts live well. Except for milking (4:30 in the morning and 2:30 in the afternoon), they spend their time outdoors, eating a diet of 100 percent Ipswich hay, baled either on the 1,000 Appleton acres or on farms nearby.
Grass-fed, comfortable cows, it is said, translate into delicious milk.
Along with echoing markets of a century ago, when Boston was circled by farmland not suburbs, and farmers’ trucked their goods into the city markets, this TTOR dairy operation teaches how you can use land to compliment community – those beautiful Appleton Farms meadows have economic and cultural value beyond the pleasures of landscape.
Appleton Farms, 219 County Road, Ipswich, MA. Dairy Store Hours: Monday – Friday, 11-6 and Saturday –Sunday, 10-4
Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover St., Boston, MA. open Wednesday–Sunday, 8:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
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