Archives: Stories

Songbird Farm: Farmers Find Balance with Flour and Folk Music

Adam Nordell and Johanna Davis grow MOFGA-certified organic vegetables, small grains, flint corn and dry beans in Unity, Maine. Here they stand in a chest-high-by-mid-July field of ‘Abenaki’ flint corn. Cederholm photo Nordell and Davis annually select their ‘Abenaki’ flint corn for seed. They look for eight rows of well-ordered kernels that fill the cob

Read More »

Gardeners Growing Healthy Communities

Raised beds built and filled by Gardeners Growing Healthy Communities in South Paris. Photo by Anne Stuer By Joyce White On a sunny Thursday afternoon in mid-September, about 15 volunteers are engrossed in a variety of garden-related activities – harvesting kale and cabbage, dividing a big bowl of ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes into separate baggies, weighing

Read More »

Balfour Farm

Doug and Heather Donahue of Balfour Farm at their booth at the Common Ground Country Fair. Photo courtesy of Balfour Farm By Sonja Heyck-Merlin In Gaelic, Balfour means “from the grazing or pasture land.” Maine organic farmstead cheesemakers Heather and Doug Donahue settled on the name in honor of Doug’s Irish ancestry. The name also

Read More »

Growing a Good Life

Wendy Green outside the house she built and next to the mullein plant that just appeared. Photo courtesy of Wendy Green Live simply that others may simply live. – Gandhi By Joyce White Wendy Green, 61, has spent the years since adolescence creating her own life from an underlying philosophy of taking responsibility for herself

Read More »

Vern Grubinger

Vern Grubinger of the University of Vermont said that the principles of organic agriculture can help improve our food system, our environment and our society. Photo courtesy of University of Vermont Review: Food, Farms, and Community: Exploring Food Systems By Lisa Chase and Vern Grubinger Vern Grubinger, keynote speaker at MOFGA’s 2016 Farmer to Farmer

Read More »

Memories of Fairs Past

Will Bonsall has been sharing his homesteading and seed saving wisdom with fairgoers since the second Common Ground Country Fair. English photo Common Ground favorites Will Bonsall with Martha Gottlieb, co-coordinator of the Exhibition Hall. Nancy Bowker photo Common Ground and the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad – a wonderful symbiosis. English photo By Will

Read More »

The Joy of Tasting at the Hayloft Tent

Apple varieties displayed at the Fair. English photo Voice your opinion about apple varieties in the Hayloft Tent at the Fair. English photo By John Bunker In 1993, needing something to spruce up the brand new Fedco Seeds tent at the Common Ground Country Fair, we assembled three modest displays. One featured assorted potatoes; the

Read More »

North Branch Farm

The North Branch family, left to right: Ada, Anna, Seth, Elwyn, Tyler and Misha Some of the horse-drawn equipment used on the farm, with the fenced (from deer) fruit tree and shrub nursery in the background. A closer look at the irrigated nursery North Branch specializes in vegetable crops grown for its winter CSA Seth

Read More »

Growing Community at Natures Circle Farm

Dick York’s love of agriculture inspired him to start Nature’s Circle Farm. Three of Nature’s Circle managers: left to right, Lowell Matthews, Meg York and Nicholas Fitzpatrick. Elliott Mooers (right), Matthews’ best friend since childhood, manages the H-2A workers. By Jean English; photos by the author Nature’s Circle Farm is a 390-acre MOFGA-certified organic vegetable

Read More »

Beau Chemin Preservation Farm

The Soay sheep in the foreground is Jenny, with her twins born this spring; in the background is Juliana, with her single born this spring. Wayne Myers photo A 75 percent Icelandic cashmere dairy goat, the result of an Icelandic upgrading breeding project at Beau Chemin Preservation Farm. Wayne Myers photo By Jo Ann and

Read More »
Categories
Scroll to Top