Our Story

Bardwell Farms was created by two retired veterinarians, Stephen and Judith Burton. Steve grew up around the Utica area. He attended SUNY Morrisville College for two years before being accepted into the veterinary program at Cornell University.  To be able to afford college Steve worked with a team of horses "Twitching" logs out of the woods to be collected by truck. 

Judith grew up in Gardener Massachusetts. Her father Ambrose Marean and Mother Lenore Marean, owned Gardener Tool and Stamp Company. Growing up Judith worked at the Tool and Stamp shop saving up for college. Steve and Judith met in veterinary school at Cornell University and were married shortly after. 

The two moved to Remsen New York where they started The Beaver Meadow Veterinary Clinic in the neighboring town of Barneveld NY. Stephen had many hobbies along the way up until creating Bardwell Farms such as - Helicopter Pilot (Adirondack Helicopters, Adirondack Air Rescue), Maple Syrup, Race Trucks, Race Cars, and a few others. Being a good sport, Judith, went along with many of these hobbies all while raising three children. Hannah, Luke, and Seth.

After running the Veterinary business for over 30 years, Steve and Judy, received an offer from one of their employees to purchase the business. This opportunity doesn't come around very often so they decided to sell the business and "retire". Retirement for Steve has been busier than running the veterinary clinic. After retirement he started a new hobby, Bee Keeping. This wasn't technically a "new hobby" as he wanted to start this hobby back in the 1980's but couldn't find the time, well now he had time! 

In his words:

"The beekeeping "seed" was planted in the early 1980’s, when my wife and I took our first beekeeping course.  With the responsibilities of veterinary college, work, and family, we never seemed to have the time to work with bees in any serious capacity.   At about the time we began planning for retirement life, Mother Nature decided to "plant" a colony of feral honey bees in an old building we were about to demolish.  Longing to become serious beekeepers and aware of the Colony Collapse Disorder problem resulting in dwindling numbers of honeybees, we quickly converted the demolition plans to honeybee rescue plan.  It was this feral colony that served as the foundation of our new apiary. We hope to do our small part to reverse the decline in the population of honeybees.  Using our scientific education and 30+ years of experience as veterinarians, we're actually seeing some progress.  Evidence has shown that good husbandry practices and biologically based management can strengthen our colony's and eliminate chemical exposure for our bees and ultimately human beings. Also, we're excited with our breeding program and it's production of winter hardy and disease resistant colonies. It's also inspiring to see the resurgence in new beekeepers and happy that we are helping to train these new beekeepers."

The excitement of beekeeping never dwindled but the urge for learning something new grew once again. Steve wanted to start working with large animals similar to his past, so he decided to train a team of Oxen!

Judy and Steve went on a trip to the Fryeburg Fair in Maine, the plan was to learn about oxen and study up before jumping into this new hobby. After a short while at the fair they found themselves face to face with their future yoke of Oxen, Harry and William. Judith (being skeptical about this new hobby at first) was already writing the check to purchase this pair and scheduling pick up. William and Harry are a handsome pair of well trained American Milking Devon working steers. They can still be found on the farm today living the retirement lifestyle of food, sunshine, and napping wherever and whenever they see fit.

Steve worked with William and Harry over many years, bringing them to parades, training them in the yard and even pulling carts down the road. They are an amazing team and work well together.  Since more is always better he says, the search for more young steers started, except it wasn't that easy. After searching and searching for a new team to train he came up empty handed. The solution? Why not have his own herd to produce Oxen candidates! 

Steve found a herd of American Milking Devon cattle for sale not to far from home. They came from a farmer with the last name of Singletary, so they were referred to as "The Singletary cattle" The herd consisted of about 20 animals and were a good start to the farm. Over the next year he added more and more, the cattle were found from many different farmers around the New England area. Having upwards of 50 animals, he needed help on the farm and more farm land.

As if it was meant to be, a 250 acre farm was up for sale about a mile away from their home farm. It was an old dairy farm with rich history in the area, the first farm settled in Remsen NY. After going back and forth with negotiations, Bardwell Farms had acquired 250 more acres of farmland for the cows to enjoy!

His youngest son Seth Burton graduated from Clarkson University in 2012 with a BA in Business, specially Marketing. Living and working 30 mins from the farm he would help out from time to time.

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