Owner Brews Up Plan to Save His Farm

Farmer Dan Kane walks along the fields where winter rye is growing at Sweet Hill Farm in Plaistow. Kane is trying to grow crops that will be used to make beer on-site and hopes to keep the farm alive as a farm. The farm has had disputes with the town and building inspector.
TIM JEAN/Staff photos

PLAISTOW — For one Plaistow resident, and farm owner, a brew pub may be the last call to save the family farm.

Sweet Hill Farm will now go before the Planning Board on Dec. 20 for a preliminary design review for a two-story, 11,725 square-foot brew pub.

It’s a move which owner Daniel Kane sees as a necessity to ensure the farm can be economically viable by bringing agritourism to Plaistow.

The farm sits on 26 acres of land at 82 Newton Road. Kane bought the farm in 2018 with the intention of keeping the 300-year-old farm intact and not have it become another housing development.

But since 2022, Kane and town officials have been embattled in everything from a stop-work order to building permit denials on goat barns, bee houses and other farm agricultural structures.

While he filed administrative appeals on how the town handled those building permits, the proposed brew pub plan is a separate entity which addresses an immediate need to keep the farm alive, Kane said.

“This is a real issue that has to do with the farm’s survival,” he added.

The filing notice for the planning board proposes a pizza bar, kitchen, private rooms and bar included in the site plan for the brew pub as well as parking and stormwater management. The Planning Board can move into a public hearing on the topic if the application is deemed complete.

A brew pub, as well as an expansion of the farm stand, could draw more people to the farm and eventually build an on-site customer base where those same people going to the brew pub will in turn buy more farm produce during their experience at Sweet Hill Farm.

“We need to attract people here,” Kane said. “I can’t generate enough from farm product alone right now.”

He added it’s always been the plan to build something like a brew pub and use hops, rye and barley which the farm grows in its fields.

“When you are having a beer, it will all come from the farm,” Kane said.

The site filing is also an effort to protect himself, and the farm, from a potential change in zoning ordinances in town.

“It’s tactical,” he said.

Kane has considered affordable housing on the property if he’s unable to pursue agritourism goals like adding a brew pub at Sweet Hill Farm. He went before the Planning Board in October with a conceptual plan to exercise the possibility.

“I didn’t file the notion to make everyone look,” Kane said. “I’m really taking a look at it. My heart is not in that option, but my head is.”

Kane has additionally filed a citizen’s petition on Dec. 12 to amend a town zoning ordinance to specifically define agritourism.

He also plans to bring two denied building permits to the state’s Court of Appeals. If they don’t get resolved there, Kane will bring the case to Superior Court.

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