Category: Farming

Maine is in 2nd place on the 2013 Locavore Index (behind VT and ahead of NH) moving up two spots from last year. Sustainable America calculates the index based on the number of farmers markets, CSAs and food hubs per capita.

Today’s Press Herald includes an article about this year’s tomato crop.

The loss of Backyard Farms’ greenhouse tomato crop and a wetter-than-normal June that doused the crops of more traditional farmers have combined to create a later and leaner season for locally grown tomatoes in Maine.

WCSH has aired a report about Miyake’s farm in Freeport which supplies produce and meat products to Miyake and Pai Men Miyake.

Chef Masa Miyake has been cooking in restaurants since he was 16, now he is realizing another dream of his, raising many breeds of animals he cannot find for his restaurants in his own backyard farm.

“Farming is more work. More difficult,” he admits, but says there is a certain type of satisfaction that comes from growing your own produce and nuturing livestock that is served at your table.

In part two of The Root’s series on Maine craft distilleries blogger Sharon Kitchens and Portland Hunt & Alpine Club co-owner Andrew Volk paid a visit to Sweetgrass Farm Winery & Distillery in Union, Maine.

Keith Bodine, co-owner, winemaker, and distiller for Sweetgrass Farm Winery & Distillery in Union, Maine, is a man with a healthy science background and a passion to create something. Thankfully, one of those things is gin.

“I really like gin,” said Bodine. “Distilling always appealed to me. I took a couple distilling classes at (UC) Davis. It’s not a major part of their curriculum, but I was always intrigued by it.”

MaineToday.com has published an interview with Jackson McLeod and Tyler Gaudet, owners of Fluid Farms (website, facebook) an aquaponics company operating in Falmouth that’s farming basil and tilapia.

How do you explain this process to others?

Jackson- Aquaculture is raising fish in water. Hydroponics is raising plants without soil. In any system, you have to put nutrients in. Our nutrient is fish feed.

Tyler- We feed the fish, they excrete the waste that feeds the plants, the water comes back to the plants clean.

Jackson- The plants are the living filter for the fish. The fish are the nutrients for the plants.

Today’s Press Herald reports about this year’s strawberry season.

This year, says David Handley, a small-fruit specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Monmouth, Maine is “actually having the closest thing to a normal year we’ve had in a while as far as plant development is concerned.”

“The size looks good, the quantity looks very good, and the pest problems were very few this year,” he said. “So I’m thinking we’re looking at a very good crop year.”

The article also includes a list of farms where you can pick your own strawberries, a list of strawberry festivals across the state and a list of strawberry based dishes at Maine restaurants.

Today’s Press Herald includes articles on the state of beekeeping in Maine,

A recent federal report has pinpointed some of the causes of rapid die-off of bee populations from colony collapse disorder, but Maine beekeepers say hives here are flourishing.

and the increasing number of young farmers in the state.

“We were looking for a purpose. I wanted to feel good about what I did at the end of the day and wanted to feel like I’ve made some kind of a difference,” Ann Mefferd said.

“I wanted to feel like my whole lifestyle was in line with my thinking about the world, like ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.'”