By Alice Percy, MOFGA President Treble Ridge Farm, Whitefield I can’t count the number of times I’ve had this conversation. Customer: So how big is your farm? Me: Well, we try to grow out about 80 pigs each year, and we’re cropping between 80 and 100 acres. Customer: That’s huge! Actually, that’s not huge. It’s
Bryan McLellan By Betsy Garrold Systems and communications: Those are the two words that describe Bryan McLellan’s volunteer job at the Common Ground Country Fair. For years as a teenager, McLellan worked with Matthew Strong, first in his food booths and then on parking and communications for the three-day mega event. He left Maine for
Gail Edwards’ four children were born at her Blessed Maine Herb Farm in Athens, Maine. Shown here, under a favorite apple tree, left to right: Belle Hilmer, Rosa Rosario, Edwards, and Gracie Hilmer. Rosa is holding her newborn son, Emilio, while 2-1/2-year-old Mariano is front and center. Edwards’ son, Johnny, not shown, lives on Nantucket.
Abbey Verrier is one with an heirloom apple tree. Photo by John Bunker By Abbey Verrier For the past four years, I’ve spent my fall seasons driving through Maine’s countryside, one eye on the road and the other scanning the landscape, searching for apple trees. I started doing this while apprenticing with John Bunker and
By Alice Percy, MOFGA President The fair is 6-1/2 years older than I am, and I have enthusiastically attended almost every single one from the time I was a babe in arms. (I missed two, in the early oughts, because my father – Jim Torbert, the MOFGA-El Salvador Sistering Committee’s representative to the board –
Matt Williams and his daughter Sara Williams Flewelling grow MOFGA-certified organic grains in and around Linneus, Maine. English photos Matt Williams with MOFGA’s John Chartier and two of Williams’ storage silos By Jean English and John Chartier, MOFGA Starting or transitioning to an organic farm on a small scale takes dedication – and a good
David McDaniel with the retort oven, where biochar is made. Stowell Watters photo By Stowell P. Watters It would do you good to drive to Jackson, out in Waldo County, where the roads go up and down forever and the silent mountains line the horizon. Somewhere between the lowland bogs and the towering hemlocks, between
Erin Bibles. Photo by Betsy Garrold. By Betsy Garrold Erin Bibles and her husband, Brent, led a peripatetic life before settling at their Thorndike farm, Mélange Métairie (Mixed Small Holding). They met at the University of Arizona and moved to Oregon when Brent, a wildlife biologist, got a job at Oregon State University. Erin finished
New American Sustainable Agriculture Project graduate Jabril Abdi pauses in his corn field. Batula Ismail farms her plot in Lisbon. By Stowell P. Watters Photos by Greta Rybus Here is a nightmare we Mainers can only imagine: A group of men with assault rifles comes barreling across the savannah to demand that we part with
Toki Oshima drawing. By Grace Oedel My husband and I recently moved in with my in-laws with the intention of farming family land. I wish I could say this was a smooth, easy process, but we all struggled. We were unused to what it meant to live together. We had differing expectations about how to
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