Our Story

We didn't intend to buy a berry farm though both agriculture and berries have been central to our life together...

Sam first spied Charlotte (love at first sight) when she visited his garden to pick basil, and he proposed two years later while they were picking blueberries knee-deep in water on a lakeshore. Thirty years (and four grown children) on, as our organic vegetable garden outgrew our land in eastern Massachusetts, we turned our vision and ambition west, dreaming of creating a rural homestead. After three years of looking for that perfect piece of farmland and feeling a little discouraged, a changing perspective (are we really going to carve a homestead out of raw wilderness at our ages?) and a bit of serendipity (an email from a friend-of-a-friend of the farm extolling the virtues of black currant cordial) led us to Bug Hill. We stopped by, and it was love at first sight, all over again.

 We were struck first by the sense of place, the juxtaposition of cultivation and wildness: orderly rows of currants and raspberries; elderberry allée to the beaver pond; meandering paths through the early-succession woodland, revealing around every turn grand 12-foot native blueberry bushes laden with ripening fruit.  We felt we had come home. Second, as we got to know owner Kate Kerivan, we became inspired by her love of the land, by her entrepreneurial vision for the business and by her warm, welcoming and gracious manner that infused the spirit of the farm.  We were hooked.  Thirteen months after our first visit, we became the new owners.

We see ourselves as stewards, continuing to build on Kate’s vision for the farm as a place of both cultivated land that grows delicious and nutritious organic berries and native habitat that serves pollinators, birds and other wildlife.