Farming with Bovina Farm and Fermentory

Everyone has a subject they return to: a craft, a pastime, a passion. In this series, we step aside and let others share theirs, in their own words.

Elizabeth Starks is the co-owner of Bovina Farm & Fermentory, a restaurant, brewery, and guesthouse on 20 acres in the Catskills. Alongside her husband, Jacob, she tends to sheep, donkeys, gardens, and a kitchen that carries generations of agricultural traditions.

A lot of the good stuff in farming, cultivating and homesteading happens in the in-between. Rarely do the best things come from reaching the finish line (and truthfully, we hardly ever do reach that feeling of finality in any of our projects or endeavors). Everything is ongoing, all of the time—the tending to the gardens, working with the livestock, preserving what we can of each season into jam jars and pickling crocks, building new structures and fixing up existing ones, replacing fencing and rebuilding stone walls, nourishing ourselves, crossing all of our fingers that the weather might work in our favor.

But in the midst of all of this, there is dappled sunlight shining down onto the ferns in the woods, chickadees hopping between snowy tree branches during winter chores, summer storms that roll in and cool off the barn providing respite from summer’s humid and oppressive clutches, a simmering dutch oven on the stovetop awaiting a late dinner, a new lamb being born. It is impossible not to pause and take stock of these little treasures. And it is essential, when one’s life and work bleed together to become one chaotic, swirling, beautiful amalgamation. You learn to curse the broken fence during a thunderstorm and praise the sheer magnitude of lightning cracking down the valley in the same breath. To say, this is truly terrible but also, undeniably terribly beautiful.

When we are not muddling our way through the quagmire in muck boots, we are sharing this place with others. There was much hesitation before opening our doors to the public, or even to new friends. “It’s just not ready,” we said, looking around at the various messes we had made as we stood with a neighbor in the soon-to-be dining room. “There won’t ever come a time when you think it’s done and ready,” he said, urging us to just take the plunge. Thankfully, we took his advice, otherwise I think we could have turned 80 years old before feeling truly ready.

Strangers and friends alike come through our doors and we get to see glimpses of it through their eyes, like rose-colored glasses. We laugh, knowing the dirt, grit, and the unglamorous that goes into it. But when those glints of pride do allow themselves to come through, we try to hold onto them for safekeeping, for those moments when we are back standing in the rainy mucky mud, patching a coop roof that was struck by a fallen branch in a storm, so we can pause to look around and say – wow, we built this. And as long as a sunny summer day promises to return, and the animals keep joyfully dancing around fresh bales of hay, and the moon rises over the orchard washing the woods in soft white light, we will continue forward.

By Elizabeth Starks, Owner, Bovina Farm & Fermentory – Restaurant, Brewery and Guesthouse

What inspired you to tell this story?

So many of our guests ask about the history of the house, and it’s a fun surprise to reveal that we built it ourselves in the last five years. It’s difficult to imagine with the gardens, orchard, house and barns and animals, but these woods were so dense that we required a scythe to bushwhack our way through the property at first. While it will always happily be an ongoing work in progress, it is so important, and mostly just fun, to look at how far we’ve come.

What’s a tradition or memory that makes this place feel like home to you?

The property abuts 1,200 acres of public protected land, and it very much feels like an extension of our home. A walk through the woods and fields is a requirement for any visiting friends and family, and it’s something we try to do every day if time permits. There is no better reward than a snowy walk on Christmas morning that ends with a warm kitchen and cinnamon rolls in the skillet. Even on a rainy day, the mist that settles in the valley between the rolling mountains is not to be missed—it’s our literal and emotional breath of fresh air.