Boundbrook Farm

110 acres

Property Owner:

Farmer or farm family

Contact Name:

Erik Andrus

Property Location:

276 Burroughs Farm Road, Vergennes VT
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The Land

Total number of acres available with this property:

110.0

Total acres available for agriculture:

105.0

Acres of forested land:

25.0

Acres of cropland or tillable land:

15.0

Acres of pasture:

35.0

Other open and/or non-farmable land:

about 20 acres of swamp

Quality of land:

Low lying Vergennes clay soils, some Covington soils. Poorly drained. Few acres are suitable for tillage. 6 acres of fields are leveled and terraced for rice cultivation.

Farm Information

Water sources present:

Available

Water sources details:

Pond, town water supply

Barns and sheds:

Available

Farmer housing:

Available

Farmer housing details:

cabin on site with woodstove.

Equipment and machinery:

Available

Equipment and machinery details:

Farm has a variety of basic farm equipment and hay equipment on hand.

Farm infrastructure details:

135 x 30 gambrel roof dairy barn, 40 x 80 machine shed. Farm has ongoing enterprises notably rice cultivation and duck farming.

Tenure Arrangement

Tenure arrangement:

Property for rent

Other

Property for rent:

Barn space and acreage available to rent or available for long term lease through some other creative arrangement. I'm interested in leasing out farm infrastructure and land not needed by the rice and duck operations.

Additional Information

So, this farm is just another of hundreds of small dairy farms that have gone belly up over the last few decades.  My predecessor made ends meet by selling of 10 acre lots for quite a few years leaving the farm with 17 adjoining neighbors and the old core of the farm along with the original outbuildings.  I showed up in 2005 and set about trying to find a new lease on life for this place.  We've tried a lot of things over the years and succeeded modestly at a few.  To enumerate the things we've done here, sheep, pigs, beef cows, goats, chicken eggs, duck eggs, geese, goats, small vegetable CSA, sugar beets, wheat, barley, and more before hitting upon rice in 2010.

Since 2010, rice growing has taken up a larger and larger portion of my attention and at this point it's really my primary farming interest.  It's an adaptive use of flat, heavy clay lands such as we have and the economics tend to work out really well.  This is a kind of farming I can also train and mentor in so in addition to being able to offer the infrastructure and pasture that rice doesn't use, I can also offer involvement in small scale rice growing, and eventual equity in the rice operation.

The farm is in a quiet neighborhood on a dead-end road with almost zero traffic so it is not suitable for an enterprise that depends on a lot of through-traffic.