Sunrise Farms
The Many Hats of Rocky and Marilyn Lively
Source: Country Folks July 2014
Rockwell, best known as Rocky, and Marilyn Lively own Sunrise Farms in Colrain, MA. Like all farmers, they both wear many hats. Rocky raises hormone- and chemical-free grass-fed beef, produces maple syrup and builds houses out of lumber sawn at the sawmill run by his son, Jordan Lively, on the 500-acre farm. His son Erik Lively, a resident of Greenfield, comes every day to work at the farm. They are all partners, and the farms’ sole employees. They are members of Community in Sustainable Agriculture, (CISA), which assists and promotes local farmers.
Marilyn takes care of filling mail orders of maple syrup products year round and helps run their booth at the Greenfield Farmers Market in Greenfield, held on Saturdays from April to Thanksgiving, where they sell maple syrup and ground beef kept in freezers from their Black Angus-Gelbvieh cross cattle. A German breed, Gelbviehs originally came from Bavaria with horns.