Category: Farming

This week’s Phoenix includes an article on heirloom apples in Maine.

These aren’t far-off planets as envisioned by a science-fiction writer; rather, these unusual names and appearances describe heirloom apple varieties. As students trundle off to school, the nighttime temperatures begin to dip, and the daylight lessens, apple trees all across Maine are ripening. While we have come to think of apples as only “red” or “green” (and usually disappointingly mealy), local orchards are now offering apples with a plethora of tastes, textures, and uses.

Today, Sunday September 14th, is Maine Apple Sunday. Check out the Maine State Pomological Society website for a complete list of participating orchards.

This week’s Source section in the Maine Sunday Telegram reported on farmers who are experimenting with growing produce not traditionally found in New England.

Lots of farmers like to experiment occasionally, growing the odd fruit or vegetable that doesn’t really belong in Maine just to see if they can.

Take Deborah Chadbourne of Rasmussen Farm & Western Maine Market in Freeman Township. In recent years she’s tried her hand at growing turmeric, ginger, cardamom, lemongrass and cardoon.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram includes a feature article about Alfred Matiyabo who grows produce in South Portland for the area’s African immigrant community.

…the pumpkins, the amaranth, and most of the eggplants are African varieties, the kind he remembers from his native Congo, their seeds ordered online. And these plants, cleaned, cut and packaged under his brand – Africando – in the commercial kitchen of a church in Portland, are crops specifically planted for a growing community of African refugees, Matiyabo’s customer base.

This week’s Source reports on the home gardener barter established by Gather in Yarmouth.

Stephanie Ladd turned her green beans and peas into French toast last weekend.

This was not an act of magical gardening. Ladd is one of the home gardeners taking advantage of a garden-barter program at Gather restaurant in Yarmouth. Owner Matt Chappell put out the word in late July that he was looking to trade restaurant credit for produce, and Ladd heard about it from a friend.

The Partridge Foundation has made a $1 million grant to the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. The grant comes with an additional $1 million challenge provided MOFGA can raise an equal amount.

According to a report from the Press Herald,

The Partridge Foundation awarded the money to “seed MOFGA’s work in encouraging a new generation of organic farmers,” according to a written statement from the foundation.

The statement adds that the grant reflects foundation founder Polly Guth’s “deep interest in healthful food and farming in her native New England.” Guth is a native of Manchester, New Hampshire, and her foundation has made grants to Maine organizations before, including several smaller grants to MOFGA.

This Sunday is Maine Open Farm Day, an opportunity to visit and learn more about our local farms. Two dozen farms in Cumberland and York counties are participating in the event this year.

For more information read this article from the American Journal.

Saveur has published a feature about the 2nd generation farmers of the Back to the Land movement in Maine.

As the rest of us get a taste for the benefits of eating local and organic, and small-scale farms start to become more viable, some of the sons and daughters of Maine’s Back to the Landers are staying put—literally on the land where they grew up—and dedicating themselves to small-scale farming with renewed vigor, despite the hardships they witnessed growing up, as many of their parents had to give up farming to make ends meet. “Stay on the Landers,” they sometimes call themselves—these kids, like Ben, who are following through on their parents’ dormant dreams, doing tough, rich work that doesn’t make a lot of money.