Daigle Farm

by Nicole Zappone @TheChronicleCT

Out in the town of Brooklyn is a farmer with a vested interest in agriculture, with his land of baby chicks, chickens, pigs and several other animals. Dillon Daigle, who owns and operates Daigle Farm with his fiancée, Cassidy Ball, grew up on the land that he has slowly turned into the production it is today. On the farm, Daigle focuses on sustainability and regenerative practices through permaculture. He strives to share with those around him what the farm has to offer - fresh produce, meats, eggs and other locally sourced products.

The farm also offers a weekly home delivery service, traveling throughout the northern part of the state to bring fresh eats to customers’ doors.

Dillon Daigle, the owner of Daigle Farm in Brooklyn, holds up a baby chick inside his barn.

Daigle began his farming journey at 16, when he purchased his first flock of layer hens. After that, he began delivering eggs to local neighbors, friends and family when he started driving, which launched the home delivery system the farm still relies on today.

The farm officially opened in 2019, which was Daigle’s first full-time season. “I quit my job and decided I was going to be a farmer,” Daigle said. “I was working at Canterbury Horticulture doing their inside sales and shipping.” The company grows container plants for nurseries all over New England. “I finally realized if I’m going to work 80 hours a week, I should just do it for myself, instead of someone who barely knows your name,” Daigle said. “Be your own boss. It’s harder in some aspects, but I wouldn’t go backwards.”

The farm now has a kitchen on site where they make fresh sourdough bread and scones, and they are currently working on licensing to offer ready-made meals, which are grown, processed and cooked on site.

Last year, the farm raised 27 pigs, but this year it will raise only 25. Other animals on the farm include Thanksgiving turkeys, laying hens and meat birds. “We work with Little Dipper Farm, who are a three-minute ride from here,” Daigle said. “I like what they are doing up there. We have a deal with them because they have a lot of pasture space and they’re not looking to be livestock farmers.”

Daigle said they worked out a deal under which they can use the pasture for their meat chickens. All the chickens are processed on site at Daigle Farm once a month. “We basically run like a fresh chicken CSA program, where you sign up now, and starting in May, once a month, you come and pick up a minimum of five whole birds the same day that we process them,” Daigle said. “It’s fresh, never frozen and we do a lot of them.” Each batch has anywhere from 300 to 400 chickens. “It’s quite the membership,” Daigle said.

Inside the farm store on site, there is a chick window where customers can watch baby chickens at a safe distance and other products from local farms are available for purchase.

For the past seven years, he built the barn, planted in the field for the first time and has a pavilion space where he hopes to have farm-to-table meals in the future, along with seminars. “I want to do more agri seminars to get other farmers here to talk about their niche,” Daigle said. “We get a lot of questions, and I’m not a beef guy, I’m not a bee guy, or a flower farmer, but we get all these questions that I can’t really answer. I really just speculate based on what I do.”

Daigle wants to do something like a “meet your farmer” event. He works with Grown Connected over at UConn. “I will say in the past seven years, a lot more people have started to care about what they’re eating, where they are getting it and how it’s produced,” Daigle said. “It’s your right as an American to know all of that stuff.”

Daigle said people love coming to his property to see the pigs in the woods, the chickens and the turkeys. The animals are moved around every day. “I grew up with my dad doing a batch of chickens every year just for our freezer,” Daigle said. “Never growing it for anyone else, never had laying hens or anything. Growing up, we’d do 50 a year.”

Today, the farm has come a long way since Daigle was a kid. He operates the farm with Ball, who is the manager. Ball runs the non-perishable side of products, makes eco-friendly products such as sustainable/reusable beeswax wraps and custom-made jewelry and offers serene Reiki experiences.

The farm offers a variety of services, from laying hen orders, flock shares, half and whole pigs and Thanksgiving turkeys. In addition to the farm, Daigle has a podcast called “Simply Growing Food,” which is aired every Monday. Daigle discusses a variety of topics on farming and charming experiences as a first-generation farmer. He also conducts educational interviews with other guests in the agricultural field and the small-business community.

Daigle Farm is located at 257 Woodward Road in Brooklyn. For information, you can email them at simplygrowingfood@gmail.com or call 860-961-1640.