Eggplant drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey Eggplant, Solarium melongena var. esculentum, originated in India from a bitter-fruited, spiny plant. Centuries of selection and cultivation have resulted in a fruit with little or no bitterness. Chinese records refer to non-bitter eggplant fruit as early as the 5th century. From there eggplant traveled to Spain,
By Jean English Norbet Kungl raises a large variety of organic vegetables in Walton, Nova Scotia, on a small bay across the Bay of Fundy, and markets year-round in Halifax. He is one of the premier farmers in the Northeast, and was featured as “Farmer in the Spotlight” when he spoke before a large group
By Will Bonsall When I was a kid, I really loved turnips, even though I had never tasted one. Oh, I thought I had; didn’t we use turnips in that traditional New England Boiled Dinner we had on special occasions, along with corned beef, carrots, beets, potatoes and so on? Sure, turnips were an old
Will Bonsall spoke about intercropping and succession planting at the Common Ground Country Fair. English photo. By Jean English Will Bonsall’s original inspiration for growing crops intensively on his farm came from the book Farmers of Forty Centuries, by F.H. King. Paraphrasing a point from the book, Will told an audience at the Common Ground
Mark Hutton ([email protected]), vegetable specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension at Highmoor Farm in Monmouth, talked about asparagus cultivation at MOFGA and Cooperative Extension’s 2010 Farmer to Farmer Conference, and Rick and Marilyn Stanley of Chick Farm in Wells, Maine, talked about their experiments with using chickens to control weeds in asparagus. History
Toki Oshima drawing The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), the University of New Hampshire and UMaine Cooperative Extension organized a meeting of growers at Paul Lorrain’s Sunset Farm Organics in Lyman, Maine, in December 2010 to tour the farm and talk about growing vegetables in winter. About 50 attended the tour and some
Hoophouses at Peacemeal Farm in Dixmont, Maine, and at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center in Unity. English photos. A Tribute to Farmers’ Innovative Instincts Tentative deadline for final year of NRCS funding: July 1, 2011 By Jo Anne Bander As crocuses and wild spring greens emerged in Maine, so did crops in an increasing number
By Jean English Dave Colson of New Leaf Farm in Durham, Maine, shared his expertise in growing cole crops at a MOFGA-sponsored talk at the Maine Agricultural Trades Show in January. He pointed out that broccoli and cauliflower can diversify the type of labor required on a farm, because each plant can be harvested only
Jack Kertesz spearheaded the alley cropping demonstration at MOFGA’s orchard in Unity, showing how annual and perennial crops could be interplanted in a young orchard to gain income while waiting for fruit trees to mature. By Jack Kertesz Imagine working with a blank slate of ground and feeling that the outcome might look like some
By Nicolas Lindholm Supported primarily through a grant from the Maine Dept. of Agriculture, this is the third of five articles covering some of the most commonly produced and potentially profitable seed crops being grown by small-scale organic and biodynamic farmers in the Northeast. As co-founder and Executive Director of the Maine Seed Saving Network,
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