By Lauren Cormier, MOFGA Orchard Assistant While the past season was a bit of an off-year for fruit production at the Maine Heritage Orchard, the orchard’s five bearing European pear trees, each planted in the spring of 2015, had a dozen or so fruit. These oldest pears are Buffum, Doyenne Boussock, Louise Bonne d’Avranches, Beurre
By Maddie Eberly, Low-Impact Forestry Specialist My spouse, Johnny, and I bought our first home last year and with it came nearly 8 acres of forested land. I am a forester and botanist. Johnny is a farmer and agricultural weed ecologist. Our individual knowledge pools and curiosity have merged into a great resource as we
By Kathleen McLaughlin In October, when many Maine farmers are harvesting their last summer crops and preparing fields and beds for winter, Lee Cline is busily planting seeds and bulbs at Fox Hollow Farm in Lamoine, near Mount Desert Island. Time is of the essence: In a few short weeks the hard cold will set
By Susan Joy Sager, Maine School Garden Network Coordinator What can we do to help students learn about healthy eating and how their food is grown while gaining an understanding of Maine agriculture? Can we use a garden-based curriculum to enhance learning across subject areas? How can we encourage students to spend active time outdoors
By Tim King “Land, as the source of life, isn’t something that should be bought and sold.” At least not according to La Finca Cooperative, in Porter, Maine, and Land in Common in Greene. With this guiding principle in mind, the two entities — one a budding farming cooperative and the other a community land
By Lea Camille Smith Thousands of years ago, Aristotle posited that art imitates life; that the creative expressions of humans were a direct reaction to their lived experiences. In 1889, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde flipped that notion on its head, writing instead that life imitates art. From Wilde’s point of view, art helps us
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Opening a Bixby Chocolate bar reveals an intricate work of art — an octopus stretching out each of its long undulating arms in search of a book. A replica of Bixby owner Kate McAleer’s great-great-grandparents’ Victorian-era etched book plate, the image is a metaphor for McAleer, who is likewise reaching in all
By Winona LaDuke Winona LaDuke is a rural development economist and author working on issues of Indigenous economics, food, and energy policy. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota and is the executive director of Honor the Earth. LaDuke’s current project, Anishinaabe Agriculture, is working to relocalize a food economy
By Maulian Dana, Penobscot Nation Tribal Ambassador I am honored to be able to share some of the recent efforts from the Wabanaki Alliance and tribal government administrations regarding policy and reconciling deep generational harm. I titled this talk with the goal in mind to impress upon you the impact that the struggles in Maine
Connecting Maine’s School Gardens with Agricultural Fairs By Susan Sager, Maine School Garden Network School Garden Grown!, a program of the Maine School Garden Network, has been connecting Maine’s school gardens with local agricultural fairs around the state since 2016. To date, over 500 entries from school gardens have been viewed, judged and awarded ribbons
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