Category: Farming

The Business section in today’s Press Herald includes an update on Ocean Approved and their kelp farming operation in Casco Bay.

Dobbins said the potential market for the product is huge. Kelp is a $5 billion-a-year industry worldwide, and almost all of it is harvested and dried in Asia, where kelp farms are spread across entire bays. It is a staple of the Asian diet, a nutritious vegetable that doesn’t require any land, fresh water irrigation or fertilizer to produce.

Ocean Approved wants American consumers to think of kelp as a vegetable that can be served with a lot of mainstream dishes rather than just an ingredient in a sushi roll.

Today marks the digital and print debut of Source, a new weekly section in the Maine Sunday Telegram dedicated to “sustainable eating and living” in Maine. The inaugural edition of Source is 22 pages long and includes more than a dozen articles.

One article you should definitely set aside some time to read is the front page piece by Meredith Goad and Mary Pols. It tells the sweeping story of the local food movement in Maine, from Helen and Scott Nearing, homesteading pioneers in the 1950s, to vibrant food scene of today.

There’s an interesting article in today’s Maine Sunday Telegram about Maine farmer Will Bonsall, a leader in the seed saver movement.

The expectation is that Bonsall, 64, will always have at least 700 varieties of potatoes tucked away for posterity, and that every year he will faithfully grow them out, harvest them, share some with other avid growers across the country and put a sampling of each variety back in the cellar in anticipation of the next crop. But a philosophical and political rift with the Iowa-based Seed Savers Exchange, the national seed saving group that helped fund his curating career, has put Bonsall’s potatoes, some deeply obscure and ancient, in jeopardy.

The Press Herald has written an article about The Hop Yard, a Maine-based hop farm.

The four principal players in the Hop Yard, already growing hops in Gorham and Fort Fairfield, hope to expand hops farming in Maine by buying a hops harvester, at least for their own use, and a hops pelletizer that could be used – for a fee – by any hops grower in Maine.

The Portland Phoenix has published an article about Miyake Farms.

The pigs make a racket, squealing and grunting, anticipating another meal, as we gingerly approach on paths of melting snow and ice. I’m in Freeport, where chef Masa Miyake has turned his Freeport backyard into a full-fledged hog farm; farm manager Emily Phillips built paddocks for the pigs and moved them closer to the house for the winter.

South Portland is considering changing the location and day of the week for the city’s farmers market.

After a summary of an online market survey created and tabulated by city resident Ruth Price, farmers market association director Caitlin Jordan said she will check with vendors about operating the market on Sundays instead of Thursdays.

Several councilors, meanwhile, suggested moving the market from Hinckley Drive to the nearby City Hall parking lot off Thomas Street.

Today’s Press Herald includes an article by Avery Yale Kamila on the new Winter Farmers Market in East Bayside.

She attributes the increased sales to the fact that shoppers can purchase baked goods and prepared foods from the food hub tenants.

“It’s more social,” said Pignatello, an herbalist who also runs the Swallowtail Farm Cottage Apothecary in the food hub. “People can still get their really high-quality farm food and have a coffee and buy a bagel. Everyone benefits – the (food hub) businesses and the farmers alike.”

The Root has posted a report on the Ocean Approved kelp farm in Casco Bay.

Kelp is a winter crop, it grows best when the water is cold and sunlight is low. Dobbins commented on how resilient and adapted to the Maine environment the kelp is. “We left some surplus 1mm long kelp sporelings lying in the snow on a dock during a seeding day,” he said. “At the end of the day, we threw them in the back of an open pickup, drove about an hour back to our nursery and just to see what would happen, put them back in a tank. They thrived and were out planted in the open ocean about a week later. Nature is determined that this species is going to survive.”