Apple scab on fruit and leaves. Photos by C.J. Walke. By C.J. Walke Autumn is an exciting time in the orchard, because you get to taste the fruits of your labors and share the harvest with your family and community. Autumn is also the time to clean up the orchard, prepare trees for winter and
By Cheryl A. Wixson By the time this harvest season is over, our cellar shelves will be lined with jars of spicy peach chutney, crisp bread and butter pickles, rainbow-colored marinated bean salad – even rows of canned applesauce varieties: ‘Sweet Sixteen,’ ‘Liberty,’ ‘Spencer’ and ‘Tolman Sweet.’ Quarts of dilly beans and kosher dill spears,
Roberta Bailey collecting seed from ‘Kniola’s Purple’ morning glory. Rob Lemire photo. By Roberta Bailey Have you noticed that you can’t buy ‘Lutz’ beet seed anymore? ‘Lutz’ was the victim of a few seed company mergers and a lack of attention in the seed industry to low-profit, open-pollinated varieties. A few companies listed it, but
‘Phillips’ garlic grown by Roberta Bailey. Rob Lemire photo. By Roberta Bailey For me, the Common Ground Fair is a continuing conversation that winds through each day and back over 30 years or more. As a celebration of rural living, it draws together many creative minds, and I try to keep my days open enough
What are the Benefits? By Eric Sideman, Ph.D., MOFGA Director of Technical Services When I started to write this article, I couldn’t help thinking about the quote from an election campaign a few years back that went, “It’s the economy …”. Well, here I have come up with, “It’s the environment …”. Even though numerous
By Diane Shivera On October 18 Henrietta Beaufait, D.V.M., of Albion, gave a well attended workshop in Unity on the principles of homeopathy (which led to a lively discussion about vaccinations) and on the value of understanding the Materia Medica. For those of you using homeopathy to heal your animals, we are organizing a study
… and Lack of IPM and Applicator Training If you suspected that your kids were being exposed to pesticides in their schools, your hunch was probably right. A survey of Maine schools earlier this year showed widespread pesticide use, without notice to parents and kids, often without application by a licensed professional (a violation of
By Nicolas Lindholm Supported primarily through a grant from the Maine Dept. of Agriculture, this article is the first of five covering some of the most commonly produced and potentially most profitable seed crops being grown by small-scale organic and biodynamic farmers in the Northeast. The information comes from almost 30 farms in New England
Lingonberry drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey Until recently, the only place that I had heard about lingonberries was on the back page ad of the newspaper’s comic section. The ad promised bushels of berries and great fortune in no time at all, and with little labor. I did have to act quickly though,
Toki Oshima drawing By Roberta Bailey While visiting a friend and touring his high bush blueberry patch, I was taken by the thick understory of shiny leaved plants covered in small red berries. Lingonberries, he informed me, then went on to explain that this cranberry-blueberry relative made a great second crop in an area where
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