This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” I never really thought that much about groundhogs. I’d watched the Bill Murray movie, of course, seen one or two groundhogs ambling across our backyard, and passed a few of them on the road
This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” I moved to Twitchell Hill Community in 1976. It was started by folks who were tired of being beaten up in the anti-war protests in the Boston area. They wanted to establish an intentional
This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” Often when people think about neighbors, they think about the humans that live in the houses down the street. But as a wildlife biologist, I think about the wildlife neighbors that we have in
This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” The year was probably 1976 or 1977. I had been on our homestead with my late husband for just 2 years. We had been pretty lucky the prior year: We were far enough out
This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” As we roll into season two of farming under COVID-19 with the uncertainty of how things will evolve with some of us vaccinated and some not, and what that means, I look back to
This story appeared in the 2021 summer issue of The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener in response to the theme “Neighbors.” With the nearest house about a half mile away, most of our neighbors are wildlife. This has meant a high fence to protect the young orchard trees. The vulnerable farm animals like chickens and
By Holli Cederholm Through art, Kathryn Cody Russell of Limington, Maine, finds clarity under pressure: She started sketching her winning design, which reimagines MOFGA’s tree logo with the inclusion of fruits and vegetables significant to Maine agriculture, just days before the 2021 Common Ground Country Fair art contest deadline. “Art, for a very long time,
By Catie Joyce-Bulay Last season the confusion and safety concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic brought on a need for farmers to pivot to new marketing strategies. They worked quickly to build no-contact sales and distribution systems, rapidly changing how they got product out to customers. Many farmers turned to the internet. Although many farms incorporated
By Will Brinton One hears the phrase “soil health” so often these days it seems to be reaching a crescendo. Recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) formed an entire Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) division for it. Around the same time, the Soil Health Institute (SHI) was formed, including sponsorship by USDA, agribusiness and
By Holli Cederholm On Thalassa Raasch’s outstretched palm is a rainbow of pollen – yellow, orange, gray, green and even bright blue – reflecting the colors of the early spring blooms that honeybees have collected the grains from. It is a sunny, 60-degree day in April and Raasch, clad in coveralls and a floral-print neckerchief
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