Ready to retire? Now may be great time to get into farming
Kennebec Journal - 5/28/2010.Op-ed by Denis Thoet – Despite an influx of younger farmers in the last decade, the average age of a farmer in Maine is 56. The average age of a Maine dairy or potato farmer is probably a lot older than that. And, realistically, about 400,000 acres – most of that dairy and potato ground – is probably going to change hands within the next 20 years. That transfer most likely will be into commercial or residential development, unless a new generation of farmers steps in to save our farmland. |
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Pesticide-spray alerts offered
Portland Press Herald - 5/28/2010.By John Richardson – Stuart Hill raises organic vegetables and fruit at his home in Cumberland. He also lives so close to an apple orchard that the pesticides sprayed on those trees can blow onto his crops or into the windows of his house, he said. Now, thanks to a new state law, Hill gets a warning from the orchard operator a day before the trees get sprayed. "I'll close up the side of the greenhouse that faces the orchard" and make sure the windows are shut in his kids' bedrooms, he said. |
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Salmon return in record numbers
Bangor Daily News - 5/27/2010.By John Holyoke – Bangor: Weeks of mild, dry weather that led to prime conditions may be the cause of a historically high early return of Atlantic salmon on the Penobscot River. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, 255 adult salmon had been captured at the Veazie Dam fish trap, the first barrier to upstream passage on the river. That count surpasses the previous record for the date of 139 salmon, set in 2008. |
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School garden teaching students life lessons
Bangor Daily News - 5/27/2010. By Sharon Kiley Mack – Machias: Want junior high-age students to learn some math? Or history or language arts? Plant a garden. Ree Anne Bridges, a science teacher at Rose Gaffney School in Machias, says planting peas, radishes and lettuce has given her students a new life experience, planted in them an interest in agriculture, food security and locally grown products, and provided them with real life uses for the skills they are learning in the classroom. |
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