essex Farm

The founding goal was to create a CSA-model farm that provides a full and interesting diet year-round, including meats, dairy, fats, vegetables, grains and flours, etc. The farm was built around the desire to use draft horses instead of tractors whenever possible.

Mark and Kristin Kimball operate Essex Farm, located on 500 acres near Lake Champlain, in the small town of Essex, New York.  Their facilities include two large barns, a state-inspected milk house, a greenhouse, a distribution pavilion, and a butcher shop.  All their animals are pasture-raised, and slaughtered and butchered on-farm. On their crops they use no spray of any kind, nor any fertilizer except compost. They produce all of their own hay and about 25% of their own grain. They purchase the remaining 75% from organically certified neighboring farms.

Mark Kimball graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Agricultural Science. He bicycled across the country, working on farms, and apprenticed on biodynamic vegetable farms on the east coast before starting a vegetable CSA at Tate Farm in State College, PA. Kristin Kimball graduated from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. She worked as a freelance writer and editor in New York City until she went to interview Mark about his farm in 2002. They founded Essex Farm together in 2003. Kristin’s book, The Dirty Life, was published by Scribner in 2010.

2503 NYS Route 22, Essex, NY 12936 | 518-963-4613