Thinking of raising a goat? Of helping your children start a garden?

Want to build a simple fence?

Farm & Homestead Day, a free event, offers hands-on and interactive sessions on farming and homesteading skills. It will be held on Saturday, June 15, at the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association’s Common Ground Education Center on Crosby Brook Road in Unity.

Learn how to

• weave, spin and nalbind (sometimes called “single needle knitting”)
  
• make sheets of felt for a yurt
  
• operate a treadle sewing machine to make tomato bags from old tarps or to sew burlap bags
  
• evaluate livestock that you might want to raise
  
• milk a goat and take goats on a browse walk
  
• harness and drive a draft horse
  
• grow native herbs in Maine, make tinctures and use herbal first aid
  
• prune and mulch orchard trees
  
• grow container gardens
  
• make paper pots
  
• build raised beds for gardeners in wheelchairs
  
• work smart, compensate for decreasing flexibility, use tools appropriately and care for your body
  
• manage your woodlot, including identifying trees, using different woodlot species, using hand tools and human-powered equipment in small-scale forestry, felling trees safely, and identifying and managing invasive plants
  
• heat air and cook with low-tech and alternative techniques, build a solar hot air exchanger and make a rocket stove for cooking with wood
  
• build simple fences, such as jack and rider and a stump fence

Children of all ages are invited to learn how to

• build bluebird nesting boxes
  
• make paper
  
• create a “kids can grow” garden
  
• make paper pots, sow seeds and transplant seedlings
  
• select and care for chickens, at a junior poultry show run by kids

Participants are welcome to bring any extra transplants and seeds
for a Plant and Seed Exchange.

These workshops take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Those who would like to help continue the long tradition of mowing MOFGA’s berm and amphitheater with scythes are welcome to join the Sunrise Mowers at 7 a.m. Scythe Supply will bring tools of the trade, help mowers in fitting a scythe and mowing, and teach blade maintenance. Learn to make hay using hand tools and to make several types of hayricks for storing the dry hay.

A noon panel will discuss linking landless farmers and homesteading elders.

Another discussion group will look at how a Maine farm family is creating community and cutting through such myths as “the next generation must go away from the farm.”

Schedule forthcoming.

Dress appropriately for this rain or shine event, and bring a picnic lunch to enjoy on MOFGA’s beautiful grounds.

Volunteers are welcomed. To help during, before or after the event, please contact the Farm & Homestead Day Rabble Rousing Committee at farmandhomesteadday@myfairpoint.net, or Joe Dupere at MOFGA, jdupere@mofga.org or 207-568-4142.