Owners: David and Jeannette Dietrich

About: David has been actively farming since 1982. The original farm consisted of approximately 200 acres of hay, pasture, woods, and rented fields in Schodack, NY in South Eastern Rensselaer County. David farmed with his father Herbert selling hay and bred dairy heifers for a number of years. In 1986 David and Jeannette established Davjen Farm and continued working with Herb marketing hay, heifers, and pasture raised Holstein steers. By the late nineties, David switched from raising Holstein dairy replacement heifers and Holstein steers to Murray Gray beef cattle.

In 1998, Jeannette and David began a horse boarding operation which would eventually grow to 20 horses. Rotational grazing was established for both the horses and the beef cows. David and Jeannette experimented with combining both horses and cattle into shared grazing rotations as well as separate grazing paddocks for the horses and separate paddocks for the cows. For the safety of our boarding customers we eventually settled on keeping the cows and horses on separate pastures.

In 2015, the horse boarding operation was discontinued when David and Jeannette sold their farm in Schodack, NY and moved to the present farm location on Wratten Road in Hubbardsville, NY. The current operation consists of about 20-25 head of Murray Gray cattle and Murray Gray Hereford crosses utilizing 90 acres of pasture, hay fields, woods and rented land. In 2020 David and Jeannette started a pastured poultry business and added on farm chicken processing for their Cornish cross meat chickens.

Top products: Hay, grass fed and finished beef, pastured meat, chickens

Where to buy them: Hamilton Farmers Market and direct market from farm or on their website.