Shannon Finn
Board Member
Danforth Jersey Farm has been in Shannon Finn’s family for 207 years over seven generations. Settled by her great-great-great grandparents Nahum and Esther Danforth in 1817, it is now home to Shannon, her husband Dan, children Gus, Daisy, and Meadow Rose, her father Dave, their herd of 70 registered Jerseys, and their Cowbella butter business. Shannon grew up on the farm with her grandfather George Danforth in a 3 generation household, and returned to take over milking cows in 2006 after his passing. In 2010 Shannon, her mother Gail, and their family started Cowbella with the intention of preserving their historic farm and giving it a future that the next generations would want to come home to. They began with the idea of making butter, with the knowledge that their Jerseys were the ideal breed of cow for buttermaking. They knew they had something very special when pasture season came round that first May of production in 2011, as the butter started turning sunflower yellow, a quality unique to grazing Jersey milk. Over the years, Cowbella has produced many different dairy products including cream line milk, yogurt, kefir, and cheese, but in the end it has always come back to butter for Shannon’s family.
The legacy of butter goes far back in the farm’s history, with Shannon’s great-great grandmother Martha Danforth having won an Award Of Excellence for butter making at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The certificate for her award still hangs proudly in the farmhouse kitchen. Martha was the only other woman to have run the farm after her husband, George Washington Danforth, suddenly passed away at age 50. Their only surviving son, Everett, was only 11 when his father passed away, so Martha and her 2 oldest daughters made butter to keep the farm running and support all 6 children until he was old enough to take over. Martha’s churn, separator, and many of her butter making tools are still the farm’s most treasured possessions. As their seventh generation comes of age, Shannon and her family continue to nurture the Cowbella family tree as it branches out, while remaining deeply rooted in the traditions and history of their beloved Danforth Jersey Farm.
