Where We Work

Breadtree farms on about 600 acres in the Taconic foothills northeast of New York’s capital. For thousands of years, these gravel hills were home to chestnut forests. Today, this is a unique and beautiful border country between New England and New York, and (we believe) a strategically important place for growing agroforestry in the Northeast. 

Otter Creek

For our pilot farm, we partnered with Otter Creek Farm in Johnsonville, NY, via a mutually beneficial 30-year lease that shares long-term chestnut revenues, which made it possible for us to access land with limited start-up capital. Between 2019-2021 this partnership transformed 20 acres of former corn and soy fields into a chestnut orchard grazed by Otter Creek’s herds of beef-cattle and hair sheep. The orchard produced its first chestnut yield in Autumn 2022. Otter Creek is part of the Hoosic River watershed, which drains into the Hudson. To learn more about farmstays or purchase Otter Creek’s pastured meat products, click here.

Doorways

Doorways now spans three sites on both sides of the Battenkill (east of Greenwich NY). Centered on a 116-acre owned site previously used for silage corn and gravel mining, the project expanded in 2023 to include a 7.5-acre lease and an 8-acre client orchard on the other side of the river.

In total, the project is now home to 6000+ seedling chestnut trees across about 75 acres of orchards, plus a 2-acre fruit breeding orchard (pear, apple, mulberry, and various shrub fruits), and a 2-acre experimental hickory orchard (hickory oil is a promising, Northeast-native alternative to olive oil and vegetable oil). We are working to enhance the health and diversity of adjacent woods and waterways, and plan to trial a number of interplanting strategies within the orchards. Doorways is part of the Battenkill watershed, which drains into the Hudson.

"I see a million hills green with crop-yielding trees and a million neat farm homes snuggled in the hills. These beautiful tree farms hold the hills from Boston to Austin, from Atlanta to Des Moines. The hills of my vision have a farming that fits them." — J. Russell Smith (20th-century economic geographer)

Granville

A 120-acre ridge-top looking east across the historic Slate Valley that runs the New York-Vermont borderlands. In 2023, Breadtree converted ~70 acres of former hay and corn fields into chestnut, hickory, and apple silvopasture. This site drains into the Indian River, which drains into the Mettawee River, which drains into Lake Champlain.

BQ

A 320-acre former seed potato farm in the Rupert Valley, which will be home to 120+ acres of chestnut silvopasture, seaberry and biomass alley cropping, mixed hickory silvopasture, and the largest organic chestnut processing facility in the United States. This site forms a headwaters tributary of the White Creek, which drains into the Black Creek, into the Battenkill, and into Hudson River.