In the 1600s through the 1900s, Herrick Farm was known as Dodge’s Sawmill. Around 1940, Bill Herrick started the dairy business on the farm where he used to spend his summers with his grandmother, Sophie Dodge, which is where the road's name originated. Bill ran the small dairy business as well as the sawmill. Later, Bill’s youngest son, Sam, joined him in the dairy business and his oldest son, Chip, took over the sawmill. 

Sam purchased his first pair of calves from Danvers State Hospital at age 9 with money he earned on his egg delivery route. He worked to transform the operation to meet the new sanitation laws and, by age 17, was milking a herd of 25 cows by hand before and after school and selling their milk commercially.

Years later, he was able to install electricity to replace hand milking, which was an extraordinary life change. In 1978 father and son built the current milking barn, equipped with a pipeline milking system that is still used today. We are continuing to upgrade and modernize our milking system to stabilize our future in dairy farming.

Today, our family milks 100 Holsteins and raises an additional 200 heifers that will replace those milkers. We produce approximately 2.4 million pounds of milk each year that we sell to Agri-Mark/Cabot, a Co-Op. 

The addition of the CSA has shown the amazing support the community has for our farm, which is critical to our continuation. We are one of 170 dairy farms in Massachusetts, down from 1,000 twenty years ago. Your support assures that we can continue farming in Rowley and work toward becoming a diversified local food source in the community.