Fox Hill Farm Conservation Restriction Honors Five Generations

Lottie Hains has lived at Fox Hill Farm on East Road in Orange her whole life. A farm girl to her core, Lottie’s relationships with the land and animals run deep. She remembers tending to the cows before the invention of quick fencing on a reel. “I used to sit out in the field with my pony, with no fencing, and watch the cows when the feed was low. When their bellies seemed full, I put them all back into the pasture with my pony. I said, ‘there's no way I'm going to run up and down the field.’ I am going to use my pony to help me put the cows in. So, I taught him how to herd cattle.”

In 1932, Lottie’s grandparents arrived with a team of draft horses to buy the land and farm. Lottie’s grandfather built the existing barn for his dairy farm after the original barn burned down sometime in the 1940s. When her father, John Phillips, took over the farm, he sold the dairy cows and bought beef cows. Her father’s primary income came from working at the Union Twist Drill tool factory in Athol.

Lottie married Frank Hains in 1980. The all-in nature of farming did not dissuade Frank. Lottie remembers, “one fourth of July, before we were married, we had three or four hay fields to bale, and a thunderstorm was coming in. Everything stopped. It didn’t matter what you were doing. Frank came to help for a couple hours and was there all day. We just made it to the fireworks at dark.”

Lottie, a veterinary technician, and Frank, a teacher, raised their three children, Ashley, Christian, and Nicholas, on the farm. Frank learned how to tend Boer goats to manage the invasives and keep the stonewalls clean of poison ivy without spraying chemicals. Today they raise Belted Galloway and Devon cows, as well as sheep, horses, and chickens on twenty open acres of pasture and hay with their son Christian, his wife Sarah Wells, and their two daughters. Sarah served the region as Mount Grace’s Conservation Director for many years and continues to lead conservation efforts as the New England Program Manager for the Open Space Institute.

Portable fencing has been a big time-saver for the farm chores! The family moves the cows through the fields using rotational grazing and follow the cows with a “chicken tractor.” The chickens spread both the cow manure and their chicken manure, scratching it out. “I wonder how many hours in our lifetime we’ve spent moving fence,” Lottie mused. “We’re always moving fence. It’s just part of our routine. But it’s good. It’s good for the land.”