Cultivating a floral haven in Northfield

On Wild Bramble Farm in Northfield, Shannon Goddard grows fresh flowers for sale, raises chickens for meat and runs a small farmstand. Along with her husband Chris, Shannon Goddard has grown this small farm from a hobby into a business, with a lot of experimentation, lessons and beautiful bouquets along the way.

Shannon Goddard bought a 13-acre former horse farm in 2010, but, she says, “I didn’t do much with it until my husband came along. He knew a lot more about farming than I did at that point. We got married in 2013 and started homesteading, growing a lot of our own food.”

A few years in, the couple was growing more than they could eat, so they set up a little self-serve stand at the bottom of their driveway.

“We had more than we needed and we wanted to share it with our community, so we started selling it and people loved it. It just grew from there,” Goddard said. At the start, the Goddards’ primary product was pastured pork, which they continued to produce until 2023. The main reason they stopped raising pigs was a shortage of meat processing infrastructure — a common challenge for smaller meat producers.