Today we’d like to introduce you to Samantha Whittier.
Samantha, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
When I was 2 years old, my mom was teaching me how to press the buttons on our registers in the farm store. My brother was 4 when he learned how to drive the four wheeler in the cornfield and my sister grew up with most of our customers simply calling her “the baby” even into her teens because Mom used to have her as a newborn in the baby carrier as she worked in the store. My siblings and I are the fifth generation at our family’s farm and together with our parents and an incredible staff we have the opportunity to keep agriculture alive and well in Sutton. As kids, my parents encouraged us to do well in school and to pursue our interests in sports, music, and beyond. They always said we would be welcome at the farm but we could pursue any career we wanted. I pursued hospitality/restaurant management working for nine months after college as the concessions manager for Creedon and Co and the Worcester Bravehearts baseball team before admitting to myself that my heart was at the farm. My parents had raised me to follow my heart and stand up for what I believed in; they also found out that I had left my job in the same sentence I asked them to hire full-time in (I had already called my siblings before I talked to my parents). My brother owned his own landscaping company in high school and part-way through college before deciding as well that his heart was in agriculture. He switched his major to Dairy Management, graduated and transitioned from part-time to full-time as soon as he moved home from college. Our sister just graduated from high school and is unbelievably dedicated to her goal of becoming a physical therapist and begins her undergraduate studies this fall.
Just like my brother and I, she does so knowing that we all are supporting her and anytime we need a hand, she’ll be the first to respond. I came back to the farm because agriculture is in my blood and the opportunity to work with my family, is an opportunity I don’t want to miss one minute of. I do what I do, because of my family.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
If you can find the smooth road to farming, please share your directions. Like any small business, there are daily challenges as well as the continual challenges. For starters as much as the diversification of our farm is necessary and has been beneficial, it comes with the management challenges of labor, regulations, different markets, and the seasonality of the various segments of our business. Mother Nature is a constant challenge for us. Last year, we had no water, this year we’re welcoming the rain storms that keep our vegetables growing but cursing the rain as we are behind on our hay crop.
In the face of adversity, my family has routinely put up a good fight, usually finding a creative option to overcome our challenges and this is usually how we end up with a new product or a new segment in the business. Being farmers, my family is built for hard work and we’ve learned that if you just roll up your sleeves, work together, and you aren’t afraid to get dirty, you can push through.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Whittier Farms – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
My family started in the dairy business in 1945 and since then has diversified with the changes in the economy, the interests of family members, and to the demands of society and our industry. Today, our farm is the last commercial farm in our town and has, with the community’s support, worked to preserve 380 of our 500 acres under the MA Agricultural Preservation Restriction. My family crops over 400 acres as feed for our cows, we grow 18 acres of fruits and vegetables, we milk 110 cows while caring for an additional 165 young calves and heifers, we raise a growing herd of dairy steers, and we operate a year-round farm store. The farm store has become our door to the public as we sell our produce, beef, and our homemade meals and baked goods in addition to locally made ice cream, bottled dairy products, Cabot Creamery Cooperative cheese, and other specialty food items in addition to hay, composted manure, and mulch. Our store is also the gathering point for our farm tours and the home of our kitchen which has grown over the years to now offering small catering services, special orders, and holiday orders in addition to the regular items that we make to stock in our farm store. Our family is proud to be one of the 1100 member-owners of the Agri-Mark/Cabot Creamery Cooperative; we sell our raw milk to the cooperative and offer the finished Cabot cheese and dairy products for sale in our store. It is a lot of moving pieces at our farm as we’ve diversified to balance the ups and downs of the seasons as well as the various markets. It takes cooperation and understanding from everyone involved to make it work.
As a company, we are proud to hire locally and to be keeping agriculture alive and well in our community. What sets us apart from others is our dedication to our family, our staff, and our customers. Whether you’re a first-time visitor to our farm or you’ve seen our family grow up while buying our produce to feed yours, we want everyone to enjoy their visit, understand what we do at our farm, and feel that family connection to our farm. We hire locally so that our staff has that local connection; they are the students in the local schools, they are out spending their paychecks at the local businesses, they are neighbors to our customers, and they share in the success and the challenges of our communities.
So, what’s next? Any big plans?
Right now, our plans for the future are focusing on the immediate future. Mother Nature has been a big challenge this year but we are committed to each other, our animals, and the land to working through the challenges and doing our absolute best. We are always looking at options to improve our farm and we dedicate as much as we can to being very knowledgeable about all our options. We are looking at the energy-efficiency and potential alternative energy options that exist for our operation. We also are working to expand our crop acreage. We have a couple of fields that have the potential for additional yield but we need to do some work to clear the overgrown brush and remove the rocks. Increasing the acreage of our existing fields increases our work efficiency but we want to carefully manage our expansion to ensure we are treating the land with the care it deserves in order for us to grow crops on it.
Contact Info:
- Address: 90 Douglas Rd., Sutton, MA 01590
- Website: www.whittiers.com
- Phone: 508-865-1053
- Email: whittierfarms@aol.com
- Instagram: @WhittierFarms
- Facebook: facebook.com/WhittierFarms
- Twitter: @WhittierFarms
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/whittier-farms-sutton
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