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About Us
Through the 1800s, Herrick Farm was known as Dodge’s Sawmill. Around 1940, William Hale Herrick II started the dairy business on the farm where he used to spend his summers with his grandmother, Sophie Dodge (hence, Dodge Road). 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, William Hale Herrick III 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 transformed 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, an extraordinary life change, I’m sure you can imagine. In 1978 they built the current milking barn, equipped with a pipeline milking system that is still used today.
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 most recent addition at our farm, just last year, was Community Supported Agriculture. Last years participants in this program have shown us the amazing support the community has for our farm.
Community support is critical. We are one of 170 dairy farms in Massachusetts, down from 1,000 thirty years ago. |
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