Here’s a memory from Nicolas Lindholm:
“I really can’t emphasize enough just how significant the impact of MOFGA has been on my life … That’s as a farmer, a gardener and homesteader, and landowner of both prime farmland, wild blueberry land and forest land, and as an eater and consumer … It’s just been such a rich experience and I can’t even count the number of conversations or workshops or resources and ideas and the people that I’ve been influenced by and engaged with going on 40 years now with MOFGA. And it just kind of blows my mind that I’m just one individual and I just can’t imagine the butterfly effect of how many others there could be.
My first point of contact with MOFGA: friends of mine from Bates and I had heard about the Common Ground Fair — this was probably the third Saturday in September of 1983 … We’re literally tasting the MOFGA food for the first time, getting exposed to what this organization is doing at the time.
And that had a big impact. We continued to go to the Fair through my years at Bates, but then I also had a close friend who did a MOFGA apprenticeship during my junior year, which was like 1984-85, and he told me all about it and that really sunk in … A couple years later, after I graduated from Bates with a degree in anthropology and religion, I really had a clear idea of all the kinds of things I didn’t want to do. But no real clear idea of what I did want to do, so I kind of brought those experiences and conversations to the fore and decided to try a MOFGA apprenticeship in the summer of 1987. And I landed at King Hill Farm in Penobscot which, coincidentally, is now just a couple miles down the road from where my wife and I have lived and farmed.”