By Roberta Bailey Happy 50th birthday to The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener. You have grown so much! Look how tall you are now! I see that you have matured into such a refined newspaper! So much poise, such eloquence! You have shared so many voices, so many stories. You have celebrated great news and
By Holli Cederholm Gnocchi is one of my favorite celebratory meals. I usually only make this potato-based pasta a few times a year, but it’s always for a special occasion: the arrival of an ingredient that I haven’t cooked with since the last time it was in season. In the fall, I mix up a
By Roberta Bailey When I was first farming in Maine, I befriended as many elders in my small rural town as I could. My partner and I would visit them in their extraordinarily warm houses, we always remembered to dress in layers, and we would ask a steady flow of questions about how to do
By Jacki Perkins As I am writing this, winter deepens and spring is still a far off dream, and the effects of last summer’s drought will begin to be felt. For anyone buying hay last season, it was a study in budgeting: both for pocketbooks and rations. Short of selling livestock to anyone with enough
By Roberta Bailey Hallelujah! We made it to the longer days of spring and the much yearned for warmth of the sun. I hope you are all faring well and that along with the sunshine comes an unlocking of our tightly bound, weary hearts. Throughout the pandemic I have marveled over how I barely noticed
Drawing by Toki Oshima By Jacki Perkins As fall fades to winter and we hunker down in hopes of an early spring, we can ready ourselves to handle livestock health concerns that are common during the spring and summer months. Winter can be an excellent time to reflect on what we saw in our pastures
Delton Curtis grafting at the Seed Swap and Scion Exchange. English photo By John Bunker Springtime in central Maine was designed for orchard activity. The long days and the warming sun lure me out the door like the Pied Piper’s flute. Get up early and cook up a saucepan of apples from the last bushel
Spotted lanternfly, screenshot of photo by Henripekka Kallio from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Perho.jpg, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license Tree-of-heaven, seed-bearing female plant, photo by Luis Fernández García from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=139593, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.1 Spain license. By C.J. Walke As winter rolls into spring, work in the orchard transitions from pruning and
Snow pea flowers. From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg#/media/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg Snow pea. By JS – JS, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10690536 Super Sugar Snap peas. Photo courtesy of Johnny’s Selected Seeds By Will Bonsall When I was a kid, “peas” meant either the fresh (or canned or frozen) “garden peas” we enjoyed in early summer, or the “field peas” we ate as split
Drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey Happy Anniversary to me! This spring marks the 35th anniversary of my time writing this column. My entire adult life has evolved around the full flavors of homegrown food straight from the garden, pantry and root cellar. I have never thought of myself as a fancy cook. Instead, I feature
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