Putnam Hill Farm
Family tradition
“For as long as we can remember, our families have been dairy farmers,” says Sarah Putnam. “I grew up on a local dairy farm, and my husband, Mark‘s, grandparents were also farmers.” In 1989, the couple had the opportunity to purchase a wood lot owned by Mark’s grandfather since the 1930s. “We knew with hard work, we could clear the land and transform it into a successful dairy farm, and that’s what we did,” Sarah says.
Sweet start
The couple met when Mark was working near Sarah’s family’s farm in Bradford, Vermont. He came to borrow an air compressor for a flat tire. “Then he came back two weeks later and asked me out,” Sarah says with a smile. While they established themselves on their own farm, they spent two years living making a one-room home out of the storage part of the sugarhouse that Mark’s grandpa had built in the 1940s. The Putnams later welcomed their son, Dustin, and daughter, Megan, in a cozy post and beam cape they had built themselves.
Inspiration
The family milked their Jersey herd, logged and sugared while raising their kids, who both graduated from Vermont Technical College. Megan now works at another Cabot member farm, Newmont Farm. Dustin has moved back to run the family maple operation and work with his parents. He and his wife, Valerie, are now raising their own little Dustin on the farm. It is their own little slice of heaven and features prominently in peaceful, pastoral paintings Sarah creates in an airy studio with a view of the valley. “The farm inspires me,” she says.