About Fuller Acres
Fuller Acres is a fourth-generation family farm in the 'Welch Hollow' valley of Fort Ann. Our cows have been eating and fertilizing our pastures for more than 70 years, as a small dairy farm that has evolved to raise pastured beef and other livestock, in addition to making maple syrup from our woods. Next generation farmers, Olivia Fuller and Thomas Hughes, are stewarding the land with sustainable farming practices, including rotational grazing and following a forest management plan. Our farm is right on the edge of the Adirondack Park, and provides habitat to wildlife that live in and migrate through our fields and woods, and since our farm has been permanently protected by a conservation easement, it will always remain a farm.
Now for the longer version…
OLIVIA’S STORY
As an only child raised on a dairy farm, I learned a strong work ethic early in life. Some of my best memories include waking up to Dad’s alarm clock radio playing classic country music, which I knew was my cue to wake up if I wanted to ride along to bring the cows in from pasture. Once we were in the parlor, I had a very important job — manure shoveler — and my very own kid-sized tool for the task. Here I am on Christmas morning, cleaning the lane for the cows as my dad looks on. Every day included a routine and rhythm of milking, barn chores, and feeding, along with seasonal work like tapping maple trees and stacking hay, which I wrangled my friends to help with whenever I could. Eventually, I found a friend who couldn’t get enough!
Farm Girl Meets Boy
thomas didn’t grow up farming
In fact, he was a certified ‘townie’ until he moved in sixth grade to our rural school of 600 students from K-12. We hardly knew each other when he approached me in seventh grade and asked if he could get a job on my family’s farm. I was certain my dad would say “no thanks,” after all, this kid had no experience with farming, and my dad didn’t know his family, which was already putting him at a disadvantage. But to my surprise, dad gave him a chance and Thomas started to get off the bus with me to do the after-school calf chores. Of course, someone would have to show him the ropes, and I was the girl for the job!
Cue that country music song…
After high school, Thomas kept working for my dad for a couple of years and I went straight to college to earn a degree in Communications. I was honestly unsure if, or when, I would return to the farm. The dairy business had taken a hard nose-dive while I was growing up, and it was hard for me to imagine a profitable farm business. I thought my best bet was to find a career that did make money, and come back to the farm later in life. However, health issues between my dad and my mom kept me wanting to stay close to home, and I was impressed by Tom’s steadfast commitment to keep the farm going. One afternoon while I was home from college, Tom and I took a tractor ride out to spread a load of manure — romantic, I know, and Tom shared his desire to attend college to study agriculture, hoping that some fresh perspective and learning could benefit the farm and our future. Shortly after, Tom enrolled at SUNY Cobleskill with a focus on Beef and Livestock studies. That experience was valuable to both of us, as it took us further from home and introduced us to different types of agriculture, and especially other livestock, like sheep and pigs. More than the classwork, Tom gained confidence in working with different types of animals, understanding health and nutrition, and seeing a different way to farm that would be well-suited to our land. It didn’t take long before we brought home our first tiny flock of sheep and started rotational grazing!
During that time, I started to circle around the idea that maybe, just maybe, we could be farmers. After college, I took a job American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit with a mission to ‘save the land that sustains us’ by protecting farmland, keeping farmers on the land, and promoting sound farming practices. Suddenly, I was exposed to all types of farming operations across the state, and the country, and meeting young farmers who were searching far and wide for the incredible resource I had take for granted — access to land to farm.
conserving fuller acres for the future
In 2016, we took a chance and partnered with our local land trust, Agricultural Stewardship Association, or ‘ASA’ to apply for New York’s farmland protection program. We were beyond thrilled when we were one of the farms selected, which would enable us to sell our ‘development rights’ on the land, which would protect it with a conservation easement and ensure it would remain available for farming, forever. We closed on the conservation easement on my 25th birthday in 2017!
I started to have conversations with Dad about what the future could look like on our farm, and finally verbalized what I think I knew for a long time: that this was home for me. We started meeting with advisors and taking a hard look at numbers. I had initial ideas that have been totally scrapped (no, we aren’t fit to be cheesemakers), and have learned a lot about what I want to do (rotational grazing, selling direct to consumer), and don’t want to do (no farmers markets, sorry!) It took several years of trying and of proving ourselves, as farmers and as business people, but we have finally made it home. Along the way, we had major life events and major losses. In 2020, we lost Mom, Patricia Fuller, to a 10-month battle with cancer. Before that, I lost my best friend in a tragic crash. Words can’t convey the impact these events have had on me, but I can tell you that a connection to the land and a life on the farm has been a key part of my own healing, and one I hope to be able to share with others.
Looking to the Future
From high school sweethearts to full-fledged farmers, we are truly blessed to get to live this life together. I won’t say that it has been easy — nothing worth it usually is — but we have been able to build something pretty incredible here and there’s so much to look forward to in the years to come!
Your Farmer,
Olivia Fuller