Category: Farming

Barber Foods, From the Land, Linda Bean

| Posted in Profiles, Farming

The Maine Sunday Telegram includes a Q+A with the Executive Director of the Maine Farmland Trust about their new book From the Land: Maine Farmers at Work,

Q: How did this book come about?
A: The idea grew out of the photos. We had a need for the organization to do some basic photography to document some of the work we were doing on different farms. We engaged Bridget for that project, and had no idea that it would develop into something more extensive. We were really impressed with the quality of the photos, and that led to a showing. We have a small gallery at our headquarters, and we have shown the photos there and at a few other places, the Frontier at Brunswick and the statehouse. And that led to the idea of a book. It really was an evolution rather than a plan.

a pair of articles about Barber Foods and the family that has run the business since its founding in 1955,

From here, the Portland-based company, launched 55 years ago from the back of a truck, cooks up 900,000 pounds of frozen prepared food every week, fighting for market share in the $31.7 billion frozen food industry and the roughly $20 billion food service industry. Barber competes with such mega corporations as Tyson Foods, Perdue and ConAgra Foods.

and a business profile of Linda Bean,

Bean spent her first year in the business learning everything Albano could teach her. Today, she said she depends heavily on CEO John Peterdorf’s knowledge of the lobster market. But she is very hands-on in other aspects of the business. She works the crowds at trade shows, dollops lobster into rolls at country fairs and studies the fine print in all her business contracts.

The Business of Farming

| Posted in Farming

Charles Lawton’s column in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram takes a look at the business side of farming in Maine.

In 2008, the total value of crop and livestock sales, government payments and the value of products consumed on the farm by their owners amounted to approximately $750 million for all Maine farms. Deducting production expenses and declining inventory values left net income of approximately $106 million.

Of this, approximately $40 million derived from corporate farms, and the remaining $66 million from sole proprietorships and partnerships. According to Bureau of Economic Analysis data, this income supported just over 7,200 farm proprietors.

MooMilk

| Posted in Farming

MooMilk, the Maine-based organic milk company, is scaling back operations, according to a report in the Bangor Daily News.

MOOMilk, which stands for Maine’s Own Organic Milk, processed milk Wednesday but will suspend production Sunday on skim and 1 percent milk, as a variety of reasons have combined to force the business toward closure. The company’s cash flow is so low that it can only purchase 2 percent and whole milk cartons.

“We are out of money,” David Bright, MOOMilk’s secretary and one of its founders, said this week.

News Update: Portland Press Herald reports they will be staying open after “a number of individuals and foundations have provided enough money to enable the company to sell its product to two Maine food banks.”

Rare Apples in the Sun

| Posted in Farming

Today’s edition of the Portland Daily Sun reports on Out on a Limb, a rare apple CSA that’s starting its second year this Fall.
The Rare Apple CSA took root at Super Chilly Farm in Palermo, where “John Bunker and Cammy Watts grow apples, pears, plums and cherries on Super Chilly Farm in Palermo,” according to their website. “Founded in 1972, the farm’s specialty is a collection of rare and historic apple varieties, at last count well over 200. Many of the varieties originated in Maine, from York County to The County. John and Cammy think of the farm less as a commercial orchard and more as a repository for rare and endangered varieties.”

Maine at Work: Farmer

| Posted in Farming

Press Herald reporter Ray Routhier spends the day at Snell Family Farm picking squash destined for the Portland Farmers Market in the latest article for his Maine at Work column.

Then, as Snell instructed me, I picked the shriveled blossom off the vegetable and laid the zucchini in a handmade wooden box so it would be “nice and pretty” for customers the next day at farmers markets in Portland and Saco.

Smiling Hydroponic Tomatos

| Posted in Farming

According to a report in the American Journal, Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook is planning to get into the hydroponic tomato business. (via Westbrook Diarist)

The hydroponic vine-cluster tomatoes Smiling Hill would grow would be red and ripe when they left the greenhouse to go to customers in Maine and places like Boston and New York. But they would be “green” in the sense that they would be grown in an environmentally friendly way, according to Warren Knight, president of Smiling Hill.

Permaculture Interview

| Posted in Farming

The Tuesday Portland Daily Sun includes an interview with Lisa Fernandes about her approach to permaculture.

Me: Are you trying to get off the grid completely?
Fernandes: It’s not our goal to be homesteaders in the city. I don’t think that doing things completely independently is an attractive or reasonable goal. But we do want to be able to withstand the energy challenges in this volatile economy. We plan to grow old here and want a place that will take care of us more than we’ll take care of it. We want it sustainable so that when we’re older there’s no digging or tilling.

Fernandes’s garden is a stop on the Backyard Locavore Tour taking place on August 14.