Photos by Little Outdoor Giants

Milk Room Brewing Co. skirts the fields where Alta Vista Farm’s bison roam, the thirsty throngs and humongous bovines safely separated by weathered post-and-rail fences. On one side, people guzzle and nosh, gathered around wooden spools that act as makeshift tables; on the other, bison huddle together, grazing.

When Kevin and Ann Jarvi bought the Rutland farm in 2017, they never intended to preserve its legacy by brewing beer. Kevin Jarvi grew up across the street from its 200 acres on Hillside Road, spending most of his childhood working them. Alta Vista opened around the 1700s as a dairy farm, but the bison didn’t arrive until 1968, brought to the fields by Howard and Nancy Mann. New England’s first dedicated bison farm prospered for 50 years under the Mann family’s stewardship. In the early 2000s, the Manns sold the bison to Mohawk Bison, a dairy farm in Goshen, CT, and Alta Vista struggled to recover.

Kevin Jarvi jokes that he had an unofficial first right of refusal arranged with the Mann family should they ever sell. “I wanted to make sure all the happiness that the Mann family had built stayed,” he says. “I didn’t want the farm to become a feedlot or a slaughterhouse or something else. There were too many question marks that were flying through my head to allow it to go to anyone else.”

The Jarvis brought bison back to the farm, purchasing them from Mohawk Bison, and started selling meat again. In pursuing a license to sell beer for a future disc golf course, they had the idea to start a brewery, naming it after the former milking room where they built their taproom. The brewery managed only two soft openings in 2020 before the world changed. Milk Room had to close its taproom and shift to selling growlers and cans. Then just as the state began to reopen, more bad news: The brewery would need to spend around $1 million to outfit the taproom with a new sprinkler system, an expense the Jarvis could not afford. They had to pivot outside to serve customers, into the same pasture as the bison.

The family scoured the state for wooden cable spools and borrowed as many spare chairs as they could manage. With the help of friends, they built a deck overlooking the pastures and a rustic outdoor bar attached to an old squeeze chute they still use today to wrangle the bison for medical care. What started as the Beer Knoll grew into the Beer Pasture. It mattered little that Milk Room didn’t have a taproom. The crowds came anyway, as much to see the farm’s animals as to drink its brews.

Alta Vista now has nine bison, including a new baby born this spring. Alpacas, cows, llamas and goats also call the farm home. The farm dog, Lola, greets everyone with a sniff. A feisty camel named Marvin had been a fan favorite, but he had to leave for a second stint at obedience school. Tending to the animals and the other farm duties takes more time and effort than brewing beer. The Jarvis’ two children help out. You’ll often see the boys darting around outside, checking off chores.

Open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, Milk Room boasts a long and welcoming tap list. Musicians set up atop a small stage in front of a silo, and a regular rotation of food trucks roll through, including the brewery’s own trailer, where you can dig into juicy bison burgers and plump bison hot dogs. Later this year, a new taproom will open in a 200-year-old horse barn next to the Beer Pasture. For the first time, the Jarvis feel like things have finally gone to plan.

“Since we opened, nothing has gone as we intended,” says Ann Jarvi, “but we’ve loved it, and we’re happy.”

milkroombrewing.com