Northshore Magazine

Northshore November 2018

Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.

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NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 46 NOVEMBER 2018 PHOTOGRAPH BY ELISE SINAGRA WHICH CAME FIRST? At Grant Farm in Essex, chickens and eggs are the name of the game. By Jeff Harder Brigades of crimson-wattled, copper- feathered hens forage across acres of pastoral green. Blank-faced blonde chicks patter over pine shavings. Mind-of-their-own birds perch on the hoods of pickup trucks. e chickens that wander all over Grant Family Chris Grant raises more than 6,000 chickens at Grant Family Farm. / F A C E S + P L A C E S / Farm in Essex are quirky, cluck-y creatures who have the uncanny ability to distract bystanders from a truth that Chris Grant knows firsthand: Raising chickens is very, very hard. "is is something that people romanticize a lot, so there's a lot of managing expectations for people who think I'm just out frolicking with chickens," says the 28-year-old Grant, who founded Grant Family Farm and, in recent years, has found his niche selling fresh eggs and chicken. And the fact that there aren't any other commercial chicken farms in his area has left him to weigh this reality against its implications: What does it really mean to be the only chicken farmer around? "If you're the only one left, you're either the craziest one, or you're really onto something— I'm not sure which one is which yet," Grant says with a chuckle. It's a sardonic take born from a life spent around chickens. After his parents—his father was a firefighter, his mother a hardware store employee—moved to Essex to work at Bothways Farm, Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks frequently figured into Grant's childhood memories. en, while he was a student at Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, a Future Farmers of America project became Grant's Plants, the perennial wholesaler he ran until he was 21, in part to offset college costs at the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and UMass Amherst. In 2012, Grant started Grant Family Farm in earnest, and quickly noticed how many other farmers' market vendors were selling zucchini and summer squash—and how few were selling fresh eggs and chicken. e transition appealed to him, he admits, "ere's nothing worse than picking vegetables and washing them until one in the morning, trying to get ready for a farmers' market." Fast-forward to today, when some 1,500 laying hens—mostly Rhode Island Reds and Red Sex Links—and 5,000 Cornish Cross meat chickens cluck across the acres around him in the span of a year. Each laying hen produces roughly four eggs a week, depending on the season and the weather, from the moment they arrive at 16 weeks old. Broiler hens arrive as chicks, with the flocks staggered so supply remains fresh. Tending to them—raising chicks in brooders, planning six-ton shipments of organic feed each month, ferrying birds half a mile up the road to free-range on a neighbor's 15-acre pasture, and corralling laying hens into a pair of greenhouses when the temperature dips—is a full-time, rain-or-shine job. Fortunately, his

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