VB: Gray Dog’s Farm

Gray Dog’s Farm in Huntington started because its founders, Ross and Alicia Hackerson, had a vision: “to create a farm where what we were doing was sustainable and where we could help the community be sustainable,” says Ross Hackerson. More than 20 years later, the Hackersons – along with newer collaborators Sara Colhoun of Hill Farm and Noll Kenyon of Stonelea Farm – are still innovating with that goal in mind.

In the early 2000s, the Hackersons were living in Florence, working full-time and thinking about the vulnerabilities that the Y2K scare revealed in our society. Ross was raised on a ranch out west and had a background working with animals, so that was the direction they decided to go, with some adjustments for the realities of New England agriculture. “When we first started looking for land, Ross was looking for 1000 acres, and everyone was like, ‘where are you from!?’” says Alicia Hackerson. Eventually, they found 100 rocky, rolling acres in Huntington, which is exactly the type of land in our region that is best suited for livestock.

Gray Dog’s Farm started out with six sheep, 100 chickens and a llama. The

Hackersons soon hired a knowledgeable farm manager, April Weeks, to help them set up their brand-new business. The business grew and by 2019, they were managing 26 cows, 30-odd pigs, 72 sheep and 1300 chickens, which they sold through their meat Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) and several farmers’ markets. The Hackersons, along with a series of farm managers and limited additional help, cared for hundreds of animals and managed multiple sales outlets in addition to their full-time jobs.

“We were managing all of this, and one day I was fixing a fence and got a tiny cut on my hand, really just a paper cut,” says Ross Hackerson. “I was flying to visit my daughter in Salt Lake City and by the time I got to my layover, my hand had blown up. It was a flesh-eating bacteria – I had surgery and spent seven days and six nights in the hospital in Denver.”

This little cut and the major medical event that followed shook the Hackersons. “We already knew that we couldn’t keep doing everything,” says Alicia Hackerson. “It was too much, really just impossible.” This led to a drastic change: they got out of the meat business and sold all the animals, aside from a family flock of chickens.

After selling the animals, the Hackersons embarked on a multi-year process to transform their land using permaculture principles. They started working on creating silvopasture, an agroforestry practice that carefully integrates trees and grazing pastures for livestock, by planting chestnut trees, Asian pears, and elderberries at thoughtful intervals in the old pasture. They installed berms, which are raised embankments that hold water and soil in place on hilly fields.

“We are looking at climate change,” says Ross Hackerson. “Around us, the trees are changing. We’ve lost all the hemlocks and ashes, and things are so clearly distressed. We’ve noticed big changes in the weather pattern – before, we would get heavy snow, and the melt would fill up the aquifers. Now, we get big rainstorms in the winter, and the ground is frozen, so the aquifers don’t fill up. That’s why we put in the berms, so we can catch that water before it runs off. The trees and perennials we put in are mostly native plants for the pollinators.”

Adapting the land to a changing climate is the primary project at Gray Dog’s Farm. “People are still doing business as usual, and business as usual isn’t where we’re going,” says Ross Hackerson. “We decided that we want to be part of the solution. We’re trying to put together something that can feed our region, something that can educate other people on how to do that, and something that’s sustainable for our neighbors.”

Within a few years, with these big projects under way, the Hackersons started thinking about selling their land, and they knew it had to go to another farmer. Ross Hackerson attended a Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) workshop about growing hemp. “I told the group that we were thinking about selling the farm, and Sara Colhoun was there. We went to lunch and had a great talk. We both left the workshop knowing that we didn’t want to grow hemp, but she was interested in the farm.”

Sara Colhoun was living in Annapolis and had been running a vegetable CSA there. She and the Hackersons spent two years getting to know each other, discussing a vision for the land and collaboration before the sale happened. Colhoun bought 85 acres, which are now Hill Farm, and the Hackersons kept 14 acres as Gray Dog’s Farm.

“The biggest story here is how we coordinate,” says Ross Hackerson. “There’s Sara, who is still building out the orchard and working on the silvopasture. She’s developing the soil, planting perennials and growing some annuals for sale already. She’s really interested in having people come to the farm and focusing on education. Then we involved our neighbor down the street, Noll Kenyon, who needed some pasture for his beef cows. So, we thought, how do we work this all together?”

Today, these three farms cooperate in support of Stonelea Farm’s grass-fed beef in a silvopasture system with rotational grazing. The orchards are still nascent, and Sara at Hill Farm is growing her vision of a plant nursery focused on native and pollinator plants, with hopes of a CSA in the future.

For the Hackersons, all of this work is a labor of love for their community and for future generations. “Look, we’re ready for retirement,” says Ross Hackerson. “But climate change is the most serious issue we face, and if you don’t make a plan for a better future, you’ll never get there.”

Claire Morenon is the Communications Manager for Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA). September 21^st– September 28^th is CISA’s fourth annual Climate Change and Farming Week. Visit buylocalfood.org for details about workshops, farm tours and other events focused on building climate resilience in our local food system.

This article was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on 9/20/25. All images by Carol Lollis, courtesy of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.