BSG is run as a farm-school using a multi-layered and interdisciplinary model where the adult farmers are actively engaged in learning with the next generation.The boys are vertically integrated into all of the farm's design, labor and marketing activities (e.g., website design by Connor!) With our children, and using the farm as a springboard, we undertake a wide variety of ongoing science, social studies and travel projects. The farm also works with local schools, teaching and exploring applied sustainability, organic science, climate change,and food politics. Students are invited to seek farm-work apprenticeships. We also employ our sons' friends to work with us on the farm, bottling syrup and washing sap lines.

BSG's syrups are direct marketed only (we do not wholesale). You may order single-batch syrups from our farm, purchase them at the BSG farmstand, or visit our booth at one of the premium arts and crafts markets(market schedule) we attend along the Eastern Seaboard. Each year at these markets our family engages over 45,000 potential customers, offering tastes and agricultural information--from science to history to cooking-- in the efforts to invite us all towards sustainable consumption & practices.

The health and robustness of an agriculture or harvest can be measured by the depth of consumer knowledge about that crop. For too long, consumers have been separated from their harvesters by generic commodity practices and labels; it is clear to us that this gap must be closed. We consider customers to be an integral part of this agroforestry where your knowledge drives best practices on land. As the farmer-poet Wendell Berry said, “eating is an agricultural act.”

                         
Berkshire Sweet Gold has recently been renamed Berkshire Sweet Gold Maple & Marine as the farm expands reasearch activites from Ridge to Reef aboard BSG's 53' research sailing Vessel Llyr.  We explore parallels between coral reef ecology/sustainable fish harvesting and agroforestry, and market-based support of biocultural diversity. Learn more about our planned coral transect by clicking the link below.

Our backgrounds

About Brooks

Brooks' family moved to Heath in the early 1970s, settling in a New England farmhouse (circ.1797) where they began part-time farming using antique and artisanal equipment. Brooks did not attend high school; instead, he worked on local farms, did correspondence courses, apprenticed for a meticulous old-time maple harvester and spent much of his time in the forest training in woods skills and understanding wildlife behavior with an elderly mentor. Brooks enrolled at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine earning a degree in Human Ecology, which concerns relationships between humans and their natural and social environments. His wilderness experiences, farm work, work-related travel and scallop diving during those years were formative. He met Janis at the school and they eventually married in 1987. After a year in Manhattan working for the Victim Service Agency, Brooks moved to Berkeley, California in 1984 to obtain a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis. He worked in numerous clinics and private practices in the Bay Area, returning to Western Massachusetts with Janis in 1990 to develop the Shelburne Falls Clinical Group with his parents, Leighton and Martha, and to pursue agricultural and forestry interests. He and Janis built their timber frame home on family property in the mid 1990s. Seeing a now mature maple forest on the land, they began building a maple agroforestry, at first harvesting sap to sell to others. Meanwhile, they welcomed Connor in 1995, and then Rowan in 1997. Gradually, Brooks' private practice gave way to the full development of BSG-Farm. The decision to take on the full experiment and have the farm be the family's sole livelihood was made in 2001 in conjunction with making the farm a primary educational setting for our children. In 2002, Gavin was born.

About Janis

Janis comes from Montreal, Quebec. During high school she became interested in interdisciplinary education and after graduating, moved to Maine to attend College of the Atlantic and earn a B.A. in Human Ecology. As part of her program, she interned with the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal and subsequently wrote her senior thesis for COA on documentary film. Following graduation, she joined Brooks in California and eventually worked her way into the documentary film industry in the Bay Area. She served as Associate Producer on two productions, living and traveling across the US, in England, and Russia. When Janis and Brooks moved back East, she entered graduate school in cultural anthropology, another interdisciplinary field which offered both academic and applied approaches. In the early years of her program, she worked in France conducting ethnographic research. In 2000, Janis earned her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, writing a dissertation on culture brokering and identity in Montreal. Her theoretical interests continue to evolve with focus in recent years on food, agriculture, and the environment. She continues as a full member of the American Anthropological Association and its subsection, Culture and Agriculture. She is also a member of theAgriculture, Food and Human Values Society (AFHVS).

Other Activities and Research Interests:

The family undertakes travel projects with an educational focus.

In 2005, we made a cross-country road trip to the Nez Perce Reservation in Lapwei, Idaho, to bring home horses, Achilles and Lochsa.

 We backpacked the Careterra Austral in Patagonia, Chile in 2007, crossing the roadless frontier by horse into Argentina.

Janis, Connor & Rowan certified as Open Water SCUBA divers in Bonaire, Netherland Antilles in 2008. We began reef ecology studies.

In the summer of 2009, we went to Honduras, staying in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) of Cayos Cochinos followed by a trip to Copan and Finca Cisne in the mountains.  As divers we focused on volunteer reef surveys in the MPA and in all locations, pursued our research interests on food systems, sustainability and eco- and agrotourism.