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Leasing Land To and From Farmers as Farmers

Trends in Land Access for Beginning Farmers Hi all, My name is Bo Dennis, and I am the beginning farmer program specialist at MOFGA. I am also the farmer at Dandy Ram Farm, a flower farm based in Penobscot territory of Monroe, Maine. I participated in the Journeyperson Program through MOFGA 10 years ago, at

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Balancing Order and Ecology in the Forest

By Noah Gleason-Hart When folks envision a healthy forest, they often imagine neat, open, parklike stands with little understory and no dead or declining trees. In truth, at least in the woods, messy is good. A vibrant, functioning forest is a maze of complexity and “messiness.” Dead, diseased and dying trees coexist alongside vigorous, fast-growing

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Where’s the Beef? Insights on Meat Processing in Maine

By Jacki Martinez Perkins, MOFGA’s Organic Dairy and Livestock Specialist At MOFGA’s Farmer to Farmer Conference held in November 2022, Trey Gilbert of Herring Brothers Meats spoke with attendees about the demand for in-state slaughter, why they chose to be USDA- and organic-inspected, and what it has meant for their business. Gone are the days

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Harvest Kitchen: Farm-Grown Corn and Cornmeal

By Roberta Bailey The word “corn” denotes the staple grain of a region. In countries where wheaten bread is primarily eaten, wheat is their corn. In countries where rye is eaten most often, their corn is rye. In the Americas, our corn, our staple grain is maize. Maize is inextricably intertwined into our daily world.

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Starting Garden Seeds Indoors

By Caleb Goossen, Ph.D., MOFGA Crop Specialist Starting seedlings indoors allows you to create a controlled environment that is ideal for germination and early growth. In addition to long-season crops, like Brussels sprouts and artichokes, that require many days to reach maturity, we want to give some crops time to grow as large as possible

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Plant Pole Beans to Save Space and Increase Yields

By Will Bonsall Photos courtesy of Yaicha Cowell A major reason for preferring pole beans over bush types is to save space. By exploiting your garden’s third dimension, you can harvest much more food from a smaller footprint. Of course, all good things come with a price and in this case it is the extra

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Garden Tip: Watering During Drought

By Eric Evans, Camden, Maine In most soils, watering is needed during extended droughts (our 1-2 inches of rain for all of June and July in 2022 was not enough!) to support blooming and fruiting. But frequent shallow watering can have little benefit, because it encourages shallow rooting and evaporates rapidly. I aim to provide the equivalent

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Garden Tip: Squash Your Lawn

By Jack Kertesz Sheet mulching your lawn can bring about short-term food and long-term garden expansion for future production in your yard. The photo shows a 4-by-8-foot plot, or roughly 50 square feet.  Coarse, dead plant material, gathered from MOFGA’s perennial flower beds, was placed over the sod in the spring of 2022. A layer

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Garden Tip: Asparagus Beetle Trap

By Blair Rollin, Scotland, Connecticut I wanted to let people know about an asparagus beetle trap I came up with. 2022 is the second year I’ve used these, and they have pretty much ended my asparagus beetle problems. I used to spend countless hours catching and killing asparagus beetles by hand. (I got quite good

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