By Jordanna Feely and Rebecca Rundquist Much like food banks, firewood banks are designed to meet a basic human need: in this case, it’s warmth during the cold season. Firewood banks can provide a safety net for people in Maine who rely on heating their homes with wood but find themselves suddenly unable to access
By Tim King The Kearsarge Food Hub, in Bradford, New Hampshire, will celebrate its 10th year in 2025. Since its founding as Sweet Beet Farm a decade ago it has been transforming the concept of what a food hub is. Many food hubs center their activities on being what the United States Department of Agriculture
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Possibilities greet customers as they step into Replenova Farm’s store and take-out counter on busy Route 136 in Durham, Maine. And they change with the seasons. In the summer, there are cucumbers to pickle, jars of fresh local strawberry jam ready to be slathered onto a slice of freshly baked bread, and
By Martha Leggat, Growing to Give Education Coordinator If you arrive at Growing to Give early enough on a summer morning, you’ll find a quiet moment to savor the brilliant purple amaranth, the 6-foot-tall sunflowers, and the dahlias of every color and variety. You’ll observe contrasting rows of companion-planted vegetables filling the garden beds and
By Kathleen McLaughlin In October, when many Maine farmers are harvesting their last summer crops and preparing fields and beds for winter, Lee Cline is busily planting seeds and bulbs at Fox Hollow Farm in Lamoine, near Mount Desert Island. Time is of the essence: In a few short weeks the hard cold will set
By Susan Joy Sager, Maine School Garden Network Coordinator What can we do to help students learn about healthy eating and how their food is grown while gaining an understanding of Maine agriculture? Can we use a garden-based curriculum to enhance learning across subject areas? How can we encourage students to spend active time outdoors
By Tim King “Land, as the source of life, isn’t something that should be bought and sold.” At least not according to La Finca Cooperative, in Porter, Maine, and Land in Common in Greene. With this guiding principle in mind, the two entities — one a budding farming cooperative and the other a community land
By Lea Camille Smith Thousands of years ago, Aristotle posited that art imitates life; that the creative expressions of humans were a direct reaction to their lived experiences. In 1889, poet and playwright Oscar Wilde flipped that notion on its head, writing instead that life imitates art. From Wilde’s point of view, art helps us
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Opening a Bixby Chocolate bar reveals an intricate work of art — an octopus stretching out each of its long undulating arms in search of a book. A replica of Bixby owner Kate McAleer’s great-great-grandparents’ Victorian-era etched book plate, the image is a metaphor for McAleer, who is likewise reaching in all
By Sonja Heyck-Merlin Moorit Hill Farm’s fiber mill does not invoke the action of a hand spinner, using the treadle to turn the wheel, creating the spinning action the hands need to coax fiber into yarn. Nor is it like the industrial fiber mills of yesteryear commanding an army of workers. Stepping into the tidy,
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