‘No Sacred Cows’
Nestled in the Catskill Mountains is Snowdance Farm, an 80-acre swath of land that is home to turkeys, chickens, pigs, and sheep. And, of course, Marc ’89 and Susan Correia ’87 Jaffe.
For years, the home and land that became Snowdance served as a second residence for internet technology executive Marc and not-for-profit senior manager Susan, a place where they would take daughter Taylor ’20 for weekend retreats away from their bustling Midtown Manhattan apartment.
Then 9/11 happened, and living near the United Nations headquarters — about 6 miles from the World Trade Center — was suddenly unsettling for the couple, who were expecting their son, Theo. The two also lost friends and colleagues, and that unnerving time made them ultimately decide to leave New York City behind for their country house in the Western Catskills to start a farm on the land. Together.
That’s what makes Marc and Susan click: their willingness to work through difficult circumstances as a pair, finding new avenues to deal with the hard things in life. Today, the couple spends each day side by side, living and working on the farm they built from the ground up. Do they ever tire of each other’s company? “We are inseparable,” Marc says.
Moving to the Catskills was healing for the Jaffes, and they soon found that farming was another way to grow as a couple. Though, they couldn’t grow many crops: “It was quickly pointed out to me that we live on the side of a mountain with terrible soil,” Marc says. “We couldn’t grow anything. Maybe corn, but the deer would eat it before we harvested it.” So, they turned to animals.
Marc took classes on the basics of running a farm, and with no prior experience handling animals, Marc and Susan successfully raised 150 chickens their first year. “Rotational grazing was the easiest, cheapest, and quickest way to get started,” Marc says. The process involves setting up a portable fence and moving it every few days in line with the animals’ needs. This gives other areas of the pasture time to recover. With entrepreneurial minds, they turned the poultry into a larger endeavor, raising and supplying antibiotic, hormone-free poultry and other meat for restaurants in New York City and the mid-Hudson Valley.
They attribute their success to being farming novices in the beginning, willing to try anything to make their new venture successful. “There was nothing to hold us back,” Susan remembers. “We had no preconceived notions on even how farming would work.” Marc adds: “No sacred cows. We had to figure everything out.” Now, Marc manages production at the farm, taking the lead on rotational grazing and working with restaurants and customers. Susan covers business development, sales, and marketing in addition to animal health. Locally, she’s known as the farm’s “star chicken catcher and aspiring sheep shearer.”
In addition to raising livestock, the farm gave the pair a chance to raise their children up close. “I would tell them, ‘From Daddy, you don’t get quality time, you get quantity time because I’m always here,’” Marc jokes. They included Theo and Taylor on the problems and challenges of running the farm, like taking care of the animals and becoming better stewards of the land. Now, Taylor handles social media and infrastructure on the farm. When Theo is home from college, he assists with animal husbandry.
Here’s a little secret: The farm isn’t the first place Susan and Marc have made it work with little going for them. One year at Colgate, the new couple stayed in snow-covered Hamilton for a Jan Plan session. With a limited budget, they cooked for themselves with food from the local supermarket. Susan, who grew up in Trinidad, took basic ingredients and made magic: curried potatoes. “That was tremendous,” Marc remembers. “I fell in love and we got married a little while after that.”