Where to Meat Locally

Meet Bob Comis

AN INTERVIEW WITH BOB COMIS of STONY BROOK FARM

Photo: Zach Phillips

Stony Brook Farm
603 Stony Brook Road
Schoharie, NY 12157

http://stonybrookfarm.wordpress.com

Bob Comis is a part-time farmer, but dreams of turning his farming into a full-time career. He and his wife, Jen, own Stony Brook Farm, near Scholarie, NY, and raise pigs, goat, sheep and cows.

Bob did not grow up on a farm, and knew nothing about farming until Jen, a horse lover, got an opportunity to manage a horse farm. It was then, that Bob, a PHD student at the time, began inquiring about farming. One of the first things he learned was about the horrid conditions of industrial feed-lot animals. Out of disgust, he soon became a vegan, but found that he wasn’t culturally attuned to eating a meat free diet.

When Bob and Jen bought their farm, the first thing he did was buy some chickens, a few ewe, and planted some garlic. He loved it from the get go. He quickly realized that he could raise his own animals for slaughter, making sure that they were raised and killed humanely.

To come up with a system that works for him, like which breeds are best to raise, is still a work in progress.  But one thing is set in stone: Bob has a passion for what he does and is determined to grow his farm so more and more people can eat his meat.

Bob shared some of his philosophy about farming. A very candid man, he isn’t afraid to say what other farmers might not want the public to know about farm animals.

Bob’s take on talking about the nutrition value of meats:

“As for the nutritional value of my meat, I don’t want to comment on that. I refuse to market meat on its nutritional value. Now, Omega 3s are good for you, and the next day they’ll be bad for you and literally 5 years from now it will be something else.”

“I refuse to jump on that bandwagon. If there are nutritional benefits, and there very well my be, that’s an adjunct to me. When farmers talk about the nutritional value of their meats, it’s marketing stuff. If farmers admit that it might be BS, they blow 80-90% of their marketing strategy out of the water.”

For those who imagine life on a farm to be easy, Bob gives his perspective on the stark realities of being an animal farmer:

“There  is a sort of idea about raising animals on pasture that you put them outside and make sure they are healthy as can be  and they will never get sick. That simply is not true. I was faced with this reality with a sledgehammer. Even pasture raised animals get so sick that they can die.”

“Farming is not something that you just start doing. Culturally speaking, the stereotypical farmer is a country bumpkin. We have an idea that a farmer is an unskilled worker. But farming is extremely difficult. It requires a tremendous amount of thought and an ability to retain a great amount of knowledge in a way that you’re able to make connections between things that don’t otherwise seem connected.”

“As a new farmer traveling up the learning code, I was devisated by being taken by the myth that all you do is put animals out in the sun and everyone is happy. If you get into farming seriously, illness, disease, injury, those sorts of heartbreaks are part of reality. If you can’t deal with that you can’t become a farmer.”

Bob raises Icelandic sheep, but has been adding some commercial sheep to the herd. He tells why:

My Icelandic lambs almost dropped dead from parasites this year, while the commercial ones did not. On the same pasture, the  Icelandic were half dead, the commercial running perfectly. Its a real challenge because there is a lure to the pure bred thousand-year-old breed. But if you want to be a full time farmer, its impossible to raise exclusively Icelandic sheep. In terms of cost, the Icelandic cost anywhere between $400 to $800 per ewe. She’ll be a nice ewe but you need to sell an awful amount of meat at a high price to make a profit. On the other hand, commercial ewes cost about $150 to $200 per animal. Commercial ewes are more an idea than a breed. It is a cross-bed ewe, which might be a mix of 2 to 4 breeds.”

How does Bob choose a slaughterhouse?

“I know that there are small slaughterhouses that do not provide high animal welfare, but the 3 or 4 that i used have good welfare standards. I have found that some are better than others. Now, I send my animals to the Double L Ranch Slaughterhouse in Altamont, New York, about 20 miles from my farm.”

“Animal welfare for me is very high priority. If I raise an animal for a very long time and take it to a slughterhouse where it is beaten or kicked, even if it is for the last 12 hours of their life, I’ve completely failed.”

“At Double L, the owner’s son Zack is in charge of the kill floor. When getting the sheep off the trailer, he gently puts the group of lamb in a pen. He makes sure they have water and they are comfortable. It is all done really smoothly. No banging on bars to get the sheep moving, no screaming, its all very calm.”

“If the animal welfare practices at Double L were bad, in spite of the fact that they are only 20 miles away, I wouldn’t be going there. I just got lucky. I would drive even further or if I had to drive so far that it wasn’t economical for me, I would stop farming. I feel very stongly about that.”

Bob posts regular updates about the farm on his website: http://stonybrookfarm.wordpress.com/

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