Horton Hill Farm
Local home-grown excellence screams from the top of Horton Hill Road in Jefferson. Bill & Carol Parker have made it their life’s work growing and gathering on their land since moving there in 1998. They started out with 25 chickens and 3 pigs, they now raise 4 pigs in their breeding program, 20 meat pigs, 400 broilers, produce 350 pounds of honey, and 23 turkeys per year! They decided to start this endeavor because they wanted to know what they were feeding their children. They grow and process nearly all their food and what they don’t have they get from other local producers due to lack of trust of how big box grocery store food is handled. Like the Stamford Farmers Co-op, Horton Hill has benefited from COVID as well. The first weekend of the Jefferson farmers market on Memorial Day weekend they sold all their first 100 chickens. The trend of buying local stayed strong throughout the summer and it was difficult to keep up with demand. Customers can also come right to the farm and pick up orders if they can’t make it to the market. This year they raised 23 Thanksgiving turkeys, and all were spoken for with the holiday season.
When asked why use Stamford Farmers Cooperative to feed your animals? He answered with the clearest response. It’s local! Not only is using Stamford Cooperatives feed supporting a local business but the ingredients in the feed are grown locally as well. The corn is grown and harvested from the rich soils from the Schoharie Valley in Middleburgh, NY. Some of the highest quality of crops are grown there, when compared across the state. Bill also enjoys the customer service the guys in the mill provide in their flexibility to be able to serve his requests.
In addition to everything else they have going on, they are also part owners of a NYS farm distillery! They make mead from their honey and other local honey producers. They then distill the mead to make a clear spirit best described as a vodka called Honey Moon. They also take this clear spirit and put it into NYS produced charred oak barrels. It is left to rest for at least one full year or thirteen full moons hence the name of their spirit, Thirteenth Moon. They celebrated their first year in business at the Mill Inn Pond in Jefferson with a new spirit release called Conundrum. The ingredients include sorghum, produced locally from Tony Van Glad at Wood Homestead Maple, and local honey. After distillation, the spirit is placed in used Thirteenth Moon barrels and aged for one year. The aged spirit is then put into a NYS port barrel to finish its taste profile.
Fun Fact: Bill likes working with the Gloucestershire Old Spot breed for his pigs as they have always been the best mannered around his kids
Carol has had an interesting year with her daughter’s horse. The horse had been acting lame on the front left foot and they had come to find out there was a tumor growing inside the hoof. They had to bring the horse to a specialist for surgery. After removing the tumor, the vet put a metal band around the hoof to stabilize it. The new growth of the hoof comes from the top down and takes time for the hole to close. The horse had been staying inside for quite some time for the healing processes to take place and just has recently been able to go outside since recovery has been going well. Carol is very thankful for her son’s help in helping change the bandages since her daughter has been away working at another horse stable.
Bill and Carol both have spent their years teaching young minds in education. Carol retired three years ago from Jefferson Central School in the music department and Bill teaches 6th grade at South Kortright Central School. Bill has brought various agriculture related topics to the school in his time there. They started out with an agricultural club and then developed this into a class for high school students to be able to take. He has brought beehives, greenhouses, candle making, hydroponics, animal health and many other different subjects and activities to learn from. Giving students the chance to learn agricultural concepts, production and marketing and the chance to grow their own food. On the right, Mr. Parker is pictured with Anna Smith on Halloween.
We would like to give a HUGE thank you to Horton Hill Farm for your continued commitment to serving your local community and providing high quality home-grown food. We are truly blessed.
