By Sonja Heyck-Merlin “When you’re at a plant sale, people can literally watch the bumble bees coming to these plants before they’re planted in the ground. It’s instant gratification,” says Molly DellaRoman of 5 Star Nursery and Orchard, a MOFGA-certified native plant nursery in Brooklin, Maine. It’s not just the pollinators DellaRoman loves but everything
By Tim King Lineage is vitally important to Akilah Zuri Campbell of the Zuri Wingi Heritage Harvest Project in Lee, New Hampshire. The object of the project, she says, is to bring the crops and the agricultural wisdom of stories from the African Diaspora and Indigenous population to the region as it is today. “My
By Lea Camille Smith In the Northeast, it’s easy to assume that once the frost hits and the farmers’ markets close, access to local food goes dormant. But Noah and Sophie Courser-Kellerman of Alprilla Farm in Warner, New Hampshire, have turned that notion on its head. While their farm tasks — planting, harvesting, storing, and
By Holli Cederholm Gone are the days when every farmer saved their own seed to replant the following season. Gone, too, are the accompanying practices of selecting seed to meet the needs of a particular farm. Most growers have swapped the annual ritual of harvesting their own seed — and of perhaps pooling that seed
By Tim King In 2024, 82% of American households purchased organic produce, according to an impact report issued by the Transition to Organic Partnership Program last year. The report states that the percentage will continue to increase and that demand has “consistently outpaced domestic production capacity” for organic. TOPP was founded by the U.S. Department
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Farmers Rhiannon Hampson and Gregg Stiner joined the longstanding agricultural tradition of Thomaston, Maine, in 2018 when they closed on their 80-acre farm off coastal Route 1, close to the St. George River. They were told that the site of what is now their Grace Pond Farm has been farmed since the
By Tim King The Kearsarge Food Hub, in Bradford, New Hampshire, will celebrate its 10th year in 2025. Since its founding as Sweet Beet Farm a decade ago it has been transforming the concept of what a food hub is. Many food hubs center their activities on being what the United States Department of Agriculture
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Possibilities greet customers as they step into Replenova Farm’s store and take-out counter on busy Route 136 in Durham, Maine. And they change with the seasons. In the summer, there are cucumbers to pickle, jars of fresh local strawberry jam ready to be slathered onto a slice of freshly baked bread, and
By Martha Leggat, Growing to Give Education Coordinator If you arrive at Growing to Give early enough on a summer morning, you’ll find a quiet moment to savor the brilliant purple amaranth, the 6-foot-tall sunflowers, and the dahlias of every color and variety. You’ll observe contrasting rows of companion-planted vegetables filling the garden beds and
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
