Hutchins Family Farm Malone NY

Coming Home

The value of staying on his family’s seventh generation farm has grown gradually on James Hutchins. While he had always enjoyed doing farm chores, James decided he wanted to try something else and left home to study heating and plumbing. It soon became clear, he says, “that wasn’t for me,” and he came back to the upstate New York farm first settled by the Hutchins in the late 1800s.

Connection to the Land

“I have memories of me and my grandfather and my father unloading hay together. It made me very proud. It humbled me,” James says. “I feel the connection between me and the land. My grandfather and his grandfather before him, they all worked the land. It’s just kind of neat to me that for so long there’s been a Hutchins who’s worked this land.”

Sense of Pride

James runs the farm with his parents, Robert and Barbara. Barbara keeps the books but, her son says, “she can chop and bale if she needs to.” Robert’s two sisters live nearby and one of his nieces likes to help with calves. “I’m a pretty blessed young person I think. Family’s a big thing for me.” James is still a little surprised he ended up back on the farm, but it just feels right. “Even when things are tough, there’s still that sense of pride at the end of the day,” he says.