Farmed the Slow Way
Good stock from the hills of Andes, New York.
Argyle Farms sits on the hills above the hamlet of Andes, in the Western Catskills of Delaware County, New York — Tremperskill country, where steep pastures fold over the ridgelines and the Tremper Kill runs down to the Pepacton. It is not easy land to farm, and that is rather the point. Ground like this rewards patience and punishes shortcuts.
We raise heritage-breed cattle, sheep, and hogs, rotated across open grass through the season and finished without hurry. The herd moves the way it would move on its own — onto fresh pasture, off the tired ground, back around as the grass recovers. Good grazing makes good soil, good soil makes good grass, and good grass makes the kind of meat you can taste the hillside in.
Belted Galloway and white-faced Hereford cattle graze the high fields. Cheviot sheep — a hardy Scottish hill breed — work the steeper ground, and their fleece becomes the wool in our blankets and skeins. Heritage hogs root the woods, Boer goats browse the edges, laying hens range for eggs, and pheasants come up out of the tall grass. The animals on our crest are the animals in the fields.
Ridges here climb past three thousand feet, and the winters are honest. What thrives on this hillside has to be tough and unhurried — and so does anyone who works it. We do things the slow way because on this ground the slow way is the only way that lasts.
What we can't sell at the barn we pack cold and ship to your door, so a box from a small Catskills farm can turn up on a table three states away, still carrying a little of the hill it came from.
Rooted in the year Andes itself began —
on land first settled in 1784.
The hills don't reward shortcuts. So we stopped taking them a long time ago.— The Argyle Farms way
Honest Ground, Honest Work
Open Grass
Open air through every season the ridge allows — never confinement, never a feedlot finish.
Rotated Grazing
Paddocks moved to build soil instead of stripping it. The land leaves each year a little better than it found us.
Given Its Time
No growth hormones, no routine antibiotics, no rushing an animal to weight. It takes as long as it takes.
Low-Waste
We honor the whole animal — nose to tail, box to broth — because that is what respect for the herd looks like.
A Note from the Head of Farm
I walk these fencelines most mornings, before the light is fully up. Everything we sell, I'd set on my own table — because most weeks, I do. Thank you for making room at yours for something we raised on ours.
— Harry, Head of Farm