A row of red barns; a golden dog to herd cows; paint peeling where it is supposed to. A pair of friendly tenant farmers. The farm blends into the Vermont landscape.
But inside, it is empty and cavernous. Each stall houses one footprint of light.
The Norwich Farm Creamery, a fully-equipped farm and Grade A dairy-producer four miles from campus, announced yesterday that they will go out of business in 60 days. The foundation that owns the property, the Norwich Farm Foundation, is petitioning the College to buy the property, which is currently listed at $1.275 million.
The foundation proposes that Dartmouth return cows to the farm and support the production of dairy products for campus. The purchase could further the College’s sustainability goals, according to Chris Gray, one of the farmers.
He pointed out that food production and transportation expends a high amount of energy when it is not local.
“Let’s create carbon-neutral dairy here that feeds your campus and your community, that helps you achieve your long-term climate goals,” Gray said.
The foundation — which is comprised of community members who support the farm — is waiting to hear back from the College, according to Gray and his partner Laura Brown. Senior vice president for operations Josh Keniston and director of sustainability Rosalie Kerr did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Although the farm currently has no cows, Brown and Gray still process and produce milk on the farm. They source the milk from Billings Farm in Woodstock and sell it locally.
“We’re the milk on our breakfast table for our neighbors who teach at Dartmouth,” Gray said.
Running the farm hasn’t been an easy road for Brown and Gray. The two moved to Norwich to run the farm as an educational operation with Vermont Technical College in 2015. However, the program lost momentum and was ultimately canceled. Brown and Gray were left to find a new direction for the farm.
The two then helped form the Norwich Farm Foundation to purchase the farm from Vermont Technical College. However, the Upper Valley Land Trust — a Hanover nonprofit that supports farm conservation — maintained control of the land surrounding the farm.
This made it incredibly difficult to make the “value-added” dairy farm and creamery system workable, they said. They couldn’t let cows graze freely.
“All the money we raised just went into paying off debt, instead of going back into the farm system and growing this as a farm,” Gray said. “It became insurmountable. It’s no wonder a farmer can’t survive here.”
Their story is part of a larger trend in the Upper Valley. Ava Ori ’25 is writing her thesis in the environmental studies department on the mental health of dairy farmers in the Upper Valley, and visited the Norwich Farm Creamery as part of her project.
The number of farms in the Upper Valley has declined drastically over the last decade because it’s challenging to sustain agriculture economically.
“Farmers are in absolute distress,” she said.
Dairy farming has particular challenges, she said. For example, cows can easily burst a pipe and cause flooding. It’s also more difficult for the farmers to anticipate the value of milk than it is for other commodities.
In the past, dairy farming was fundamental to the culture of the Upper Valley, she added.
“It seems like such an intimate and important cultural role that was so important to this region that’s now become so disconnected,” she said. “I think there are a lot of people passionate about bringing it back to the local because there is so much institutional knowledge in this area about dairying, and people used to be really proud of the distinctiveness of New England milk.”
Gray and Brown agreed, stressing the importance of farming to the identity of the region.
“This is part of our community,” Brown said.
Gray pointed out that their creamery and farm set-up is uniquely lucrative and difficult to replicate. Often, cows aren’t milked on the same site that the dairy is processed into milk and cheese.
Gray compared the quality of the farm to driving a hand-made car, and pointed to the silver machinery in the creamery with pride. If Dartmouth decided to invest in a creamery in the future, it would be much more expensive, he predicted.
“You cannot recreate this system,” he said. “And it’s already up and running: it’s an immediate way for them to get a result.”
Ultimately, Gray and Brown called for Dartmouth to support its rural community as it becomes more difficult for farmers to subsist.
“I worry people might look at this project, this proposal and see it as unserious in some way,” Gray said. “We’re deadly serious about this. Farming is serious.”
Charlotte Hampton is the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. She hails from New York, N.Y., and is studying government and philosophy at the College.
She has previously worked as an intern at Bloomberg News, where she was writing about work, and the Voice of America, where she was writing for the press freedom desk. Her writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, the Miami Herald and her local paper: the West Side Rag. She is the recipient of the 2024 Reveille Seven Courage in Student Journalism Award for her reporting on campus protest in the spring of 2024. She is a member of the Board of the Student Press Law Center.
Outside of The D, she likes reading Clarice Lispector, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Annie Dillard and one sentimental copy of “A Coney Island of the Mind.”
You can reach her with tips/corrections at editor@thedartmouth.com. You may submit letters to the editor to the same email. She is also reachable on Signal at 9176831832.
