Sheep grazing solar farms in Massachusetts scales into a working farm business
Sheep grazing solar farms in Massachusetts has grown from a side project into a working farm business. Jesse and Elspeth Robertson Dubois, a father and daughter team, started with 21 ewes on 2 solar arrays in Northfield, Massachusetts, in 2021. Their business, Finicky Farm, now stewards more than 145 acres of Massachusetts solar sites across 10 arrays, with more than 250 ewes, and expects to graze close to 600 animals next year, once lambs are counted alongside the breeding ewes.
There's this narrative that solar grazing isn't production agriculture. For us, it absolutely is.
Jesse Robertson Dubois, farmer at Finicky Farm in Northfield, Massachusetts. Source 1.
The 2021 and 2026 figures count ewes specifically. The next year figure is the farm own projection once lambs are counted alongside the breeding ewes, not a 3rd count of ewes alone.
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| 2021, start | 21 |
| 2026, today | 250 |
| Next year, projected | 600 |
The work is as much logistics as farming for a family run flock
Most Massachusetts solar sites run only 10 to 11 acres each, far smaller than a single large array elsewhere in the country. That size difference means Jesse Robertson Dubois spends as much time moving flocks between scattered sites along back roads as he spends tending them in 1 field, a detail that makes the operation as much logistics work as farming. One site, the Fitchburg Renewables solar array, carried 215 sheep among 15,000 panels across 20 acres as of June 2024, while a separate 11 acre array in Hadley carried 120 sheep as of October 2024, 2 of the 10 arrays the family now manages across the state. Most grazing contracts at Finicky Farm run 5 years, giving the family a stable planning horizon across those scattered sites.
Underneath, it's lush all season. It stays vegetative far longer than our open fields.
Elspeth Robertson Dubois, farmer at Finicky Farm. Source 1.
Massachusetts already has other graziers and dozens of shared solar sites
Finicky Farm is not the only Massachusetts operator grazing sheep on solar power sites. Solar Shepherd, run by Dan Finnegan in Brookfield, grazes 75 sheep on a 15 acre, 5 megawatt direct current array owned by SWEB Development, enough generating capacity for about 1,100 homes. As of mid 2024, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources counted at least 45 solar operations statewide sharing land with farmers, a practice called agrivoltaics, land that combines farming with solar power generation on the same acres. The state incentive program called SMART had 7 agrivoltaic sites operating at that time, with 14 more in development.
A small Massachusetts flock adds up against a much larger national practice
Finicky Farm is also preparing to add a new 75 acre site with higher panel clearance, meant to support grazing, hay production and other crops. Jesse Robertson Dubois says that next year the family will be managing land carrying more than 45 megawatts of solar generating capacity, enough to send electricity to thousands of homes. Nationally, sheep now graze about 129,000 acres of solar sites across more than 500 sites in 30 states, according to the American Solar Grazing Association census conducted with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The 145 acres Finicky Farm grazes in Massachusetts is a small but specific and fast growing share of that national total.
This chart compares 1 farm own reported footprint, source 1, against an independent national survey total, source 5, not 2 estimates of the same figure. The chart single source field names source 5, the larger and nationally sourced figure, since the Finicky Farm figure already runs as its own stat tile and chart above.
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| Acres Finicky Farm grazes with sheep in Massachusetts | 145 |
| Acres of solar sites grazed by sheep nationally | 129000 |