Eden Pond Farm in Bernardston raises meat chickens, but because of the lack of facilities in Massachusetts, drives their birds to Rhode Island for processing, requiring either a full day away from the farm, or two round trips of 200 miles. North Plain Farm in Great Barrington raises pork and beef, and drives several hours […]
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Marlene and Chris Stasinos farm 139 acres of land and operate a popular farm stand in Haverhill. They offer educational tours to local groups and are committed to sustainable farming practices. In 2011, looking for ways to keep their farm in business and meet customers’ growing demand for local meats, they added eight pigs to […]
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Jane Janovsky makes and markets artisanal jams, made primarily from fruit she harvests from local farms in the Pioneer Valley. She’s certified by the state as a safe food handler, pays her town a fee each year in order to be permitted to cook her jams in her commercially certified home kitchen, and then has […]
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When Pam and Ray Robinson decided to start building a creamery to make cheese on their Hardwick dairy farm in 2010, they ran into multiple unexpected expenses. While most creameries use PVC pipes for plumbing, the Massachusetts Building Code considers on-farm creameries to be commercial operations versus agricultural or residential and so required the Robinsons […]
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Nutrition Facts product labels are due for a refresh. Basically unchanged since they first appeared in the 1990s, the FDA’s proposed new labels (above, right) would be more consumer-friendly, with easier-to-understand calorie and serving size information, and would include added sugars as a percentage of recommended daily intake. For […]
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