Moses Mill Farm is on a mission, and it’s one rooted in the history of their place and the currency of their goal.
“We want to make the world a better place,” farmer Amy Davis says.
“Chatham is a very quiet place, there is a lot of opportunity to do good here, you can make a big difference, just working to make the world a better place,” she says.
She helped form the non-profit community group Chatham First, with the goals of improving quality of life for residents, supporting local business, and attracting tourists. In 2015, she helped launch a farmer’s market in Chatham that thrived until the Covid era.
At Moses Mill Farm, she and her family live in a nearly 150-year-old farmhouse built by Louis Riddle in 1862. And every morning, noon, and night, they’re out in the pastures and barns raising cattle, goats, chicken, and pigs with free-range, natural methods. They sell direct from the farm, and at farmer’s markets like the Danville market.
“Most of our customers these days come to us. We’ve been around long enough to where people know we’re here.”
“We’re a very small, boutique operation,” she says. “If you want a Dexter cow – they are a lot leaner than Angus – you come to us.”
They have specific growing regimens for every animal on the farm, but they all have in common free range and access to rotating pastures.
They raise one flock of chickens to lay eggs, and another for the poultry meat. “The very best eggs come when the chickens can peck all around the barn and peck up all the bugs, if they are truly free range,” she says.
“And the meat chickens, we move them to fresh pasture every day, they get all the bugs and clover they can eat, and in the fall there are a lot of grasshoppers around, and boy are they happy chickens.”
They raise goats for milk, to make cheese, and to breed. And pigs for the meat and the fat.
“When you raise piglets on the pasture, they get plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and they’re able to forage for grains and nuts, they have healthy meat and fat, and they store all that vitamin D in their good fat.”
And then there are the cattle.
“We raise Dexter cows, they are a Scottish breed that’s good for milk and meat. They are a small breed, that’s why we chose them. They’re very good on the pasture, and they are delicious, lean and dense meat, when raised solely on grass and hay.”
At the end of the day, “our family has a mission to make the world a better place,” she says.
“We want to provide the best food we can for our community and ourselves.”
