WALTON, NY – The drive up Fletcher Road is beautiful; the houses and barns of Bear Farm are nestled in the blue-green brilliance of Delaware County’s bucolic scenery. Visitors will pass the farm’s eponymous sign as they make the sharp turn onto the country road: “Bear Farm – All-Natural Beef for Sale – Raised to be Tender.”
The farmhouse and barns are neatly arranged around a picturesque central yard and driveway loop.
Gordon (“Gordy”) Fletcher steps down from the tractor he is working on and is soon accompanied by his two dogs as he walks up the driveway. He and his wife Karin have raised beef cattle on this land for 35 to 40 years. Bear Farm has been in the family for three generations, tracing back to the 1940s.
Today, he has something unusual to show off. One of his Simmental-Black Angus crosses recently gave birth to something of a miracle – a set of identical triplets.
As most know, triplets are a statistical improbability in agriculture – let alone a healthy trio that all survive. Different industry voices seem to differ on the size of the statistical pool, but even at the low end, the odds of a set of triplets being born to a dairy or beef cow is around 1 in 100,000. The odds of all three animals being born alive and healthy is even rarer.
“It was crazy,” Karin said on the walk down the laneway toward the pasture. “He delivered the twins and then he was like ‘I think she’s got one more!’”
All three calves, now around seven weeks old, are bulls and seem to be thriving. Upon the visit to the pasture, they were found resting with their mama in the shade of an heirloom apple tree, finding respite from the warm sunshine. It was an amusing sight as all three small faces popped up from the grass, ears alert as they greeted their visitors.
Bear Farm will raise the trio “for a while,” said Karin. Their ultimate place in the farm’s beef program will be decided later.
For now, the Fletchers are just enjoying their little miracles and showing them off to the world.
