Smithfield farm gets to the grass roots
Owner fierce advocate for local food movement
If you ever want to talk serious local agricultural strategy, sit down with Ann Marie Bouthillette of Blackbird Farm. She is a tireless advocate for the entire farming community in Rhode Island, starting with her family’s own pasture-based beef and pork farm in Smithfield, but reaching even as far as her own competitors. She has her finger on the pulse of the local food movement here and around the country, and you can tell that she is always thinking up some new, creative way to better promote and practice appropriate-scale agriculture. You can probably imagine how thrilled I was for the chance to talk to her again about some exciting things going on at her farm and statewide
Blackbird Farm sits on over 200 acres along Limerock Road in Smithfield. They raise their Black Angus cattle, which you can sometimes see grazing in one of the roadside pastures, on a diet of grass supplemented with non-GMO grains; and their free-range American Heritage Berkshire pigs, what Ann Marie calls “the angus of pork,” on a diet of non-GMO feed supplemented with woodland roughage.
Their farm stand is at 660 Douglas Pike (Route 7), right at the intersection with Limerock Road. This is where the public can purchase frozen cuts of the farm’s beef and pork, along with other agricultural products from around the state. They also sell to local institutions, like Johnson and Wales University and Roger Williams University. Check out their website, at http://blackbirdfarmri.com/, to learn more.
I visited the farm last Thursday afternoon. The warm air and approaching sunset put the farm in a particularly beautiful light, and set an appropriate backdrop for our long conversation about the state of agriculture in Rhode Island.
As we drove and walked through the farm’s 200-plus acres, Ann Marie expressed the importance of truly local animal agriculture. At Blackbird, she explained, the whole cycle takes place right on the farm: their animals are born, weaned, raised, bred, fattened, and ultimately sold right on the farm.
Their operation is a far cry from a feedlot, where the scaled-up, product-at-thecheapest-cost-possible business model means that the cattle are bought at an older age, put into confinement, force-fed massive quantities of the cheapest sources of calories possible, pumped with drugs and hormones, and shipped off to be slaughtered and sold God-knowswhere.
In talking to Ann Marie, you can tell how carefully she thinks about each step of the process of raising animals, each method and practice that her farm uses. She makes decisions consciously, with the welfare of the animals and her customers in mind, and each one is very deliberate and not simply based on the oftenflawed conventional wisdom. Walking through the rolling pastures and wooded areas of Blackbird, I was more than a little reassured that local, appropriate-scale agriculture can give the CAFO business model a run for its money.
Running a business like this is no small task, so make no mistake: Blackbird Farm is truly a family affair. It takes a huge amount of work to raise, feed, care for, move, and sell meat animals, grow and harvest 600-plus bales of hay for winter feed, manage the finances and operation of a farm, and market their
brand. So while Ann Marie is the public face of the farm, her husband Kevin, their sons Brandon and Troy, their daughter Sam, and their daughter-in-law Sarah all play crucial, laborious roles in the farm’s day-today operations and management.
And that is why Ann Marie has become such a tireless advocate for local small-scale agriculture. By getting the public to think about where their food comes from – fostering public awareness of farmers markets, starting conversations with the farmers whose hands grow and raise their food, and, to borrow her awesome pun, getting their minds down to the grass roots of local agriculture – Ann Marie is confident that we can grow the local agricultural economy and create a sustainable environment for the farmers, their farms, and the animals and plants that inhabit them.
On that note, one of the major reasons for my visit to the farm was to discuss the grand opening of their farmers market this week.
The market will be located at Blackbird’s Farm Stand, 660 Douglas Pike. It will run every Friday, starting this week (May 26), from 4 to 7 p.m. It is being organized by Eat Drink RI, with the intention of making consumers more aware of local products and giving a boost to Blackbird and other local producers.
There will be at least six farms selling in the first week, with plenty more getting on board as the season progresses. Customers will be able to buy a huge range of local products, from the meat, produce, eggs, and dairy, to baked goods, sodas and honey, to maybe even sea salt. There will be information on local farms and an oxen-drawn carriage from Grandpa Ted’s for the kids. This is a big deal, so make sure you’re there!
Alex Kithes is an urban farmer and a lifelong resident of Woonsocket. He studied engineering at Boston University and Brown University, and works as an electrical engineer in Cranston. Email him at agkithes@gmail.com or visit TheOpinionatedFarmer.wordpress.com. His column runs every other Sunday.