Moooooove Over Stop & Shop: Beef Business Picking Up at Local Farms

What does teaching high school history have to do with raising cattle? 

Perhaps not much, unless you're Nunz Corsino. The veteran Hamden High School teacher recently retired and has made a business out of his love for farming. 

The Ashlawn Farm in the beautiful town of Lyme is filled with grazing cattle. Nunz Corsino looks over his herd, making sure they're in good health and fed well. Corsino said, "I always loved the farm, and farming, but unfortunately I wasn't born into it or married into it."

That didn't stop him. Nunz Corsino and his wife Irene started the Four Mile River Farm in Old Lyme in 1985. Recently, his operation became too large and he expanded to the Ashlawn Farm a few miles up the road in Lyme.

"With the sustainable agriculture movement and people wanting to buy local," Corsino said, "it's almost gone from us wondering 'Gee, how are we going to move these steers' to 'Oh my God, I don't have enough to go around'."

The cows are fed a diet that consists of locally milled corn meal and local hay or grain. They graze in either Lyme or Old Lyme for about a year before they are slaughtered in Rhode Island (Corsino prefers the term harvested). The meat is hung in Rhode Island at a USDA inspected facility and the carcasses are dry aged for weeks which helps maximize the flavor.

Back at the the Four Mile Farm the meat is returned, cut, and packaged and put for sale at various farmers markets and restaurants across the state. The beef is more expensive than what you would find at a local grocery store or butcher but Corsino says for those who care about where their meat comes from it's worth it.

"You get what you pay for, it's always been that way and it will always be that way."

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