Corie Pierce and Adam Wilson met in 2005 during a UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden Apprenticeship, and soon began discussing a shared vision for a community farm where the two could combine their passions and talents. Four years later they would come back together to start Bread & Butter Farm on a former Shelburne dairy farm, conserved by the Vermont Land Trust.

When Bread and Butter says they are a diversified operation, they mean it! Adam and Corie run 5 key enterprises on their growing farm, including raising grass-fed beef, growing organic veggies, baking traditional German breads in a wood-fired oven, running on-farm events (including summer weekly burger nights), and hosting educational programs.

With their range of offerings outpacing their available building space, Corie and Adam found themselves having to rotate business functions out of a single facility. So, they might use the bakery kitchen to host a school learning visit on Monday, to wash and pack produce on Wednesday, prep for burger night on Friday, and actually bake bread on Saturday. Without more flexible space for their operations, Bread and Butter found its opportunity to grow contingent on expanding their building.

Corie and Adam began working up construction options late in 2014, some costing less and some more ambitious. With their final plan in hand, the partners applied to the Vermont Farm Fund for a $20,000 Business Builder Loan to fund a combined renovation/addition of their existing facilities.

The addition will provide more options for concurrent operations at the farm, with dedicated space for combined kitchen and FSMA compliant wash/pack area. The bakery/farm store portion of the building will also be renovated. The bakery will end up with more available bake days and time to trial recipes, and there will be more days available too for on-farm events and educational programs. All this should lead to increased demand for the farm’s beef, and will thus justify an expansion of their herd size.

With spring in the air, construction on the building should be nearly complete, ready for school children, farm store visitors and burger night guests when the weather gets warm!

Photos courtesy of Bread and Butter Farm