Back to the farm, a growing trend. Young college graduates commit to family farming. (complete article from source)
Source: TimesRecord.com, by Rachel Ganong
May 01, 2009
DURHAM — You might call it an agricultural revolution. Young people, with college and graduate degrees, are turning to the earth to pursue farming as means of achieving a greater good.
Drive through Bowdoinham or Richmond, where sediment from Merrymeeting Bay has long contributed to rich growing grounds, and new farms seem to be sprouting up as quickly as the diversified, organic vegetables they're growing.
New farmers are filtering into the state through organizations like the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Maine FarmLink, land trusts and even with help from programs like Land for Maine's Future.
"This isn't just a phase of my life," said Steve Sinisi, 32, who recently secured a conservation easement on 70 acres in Durham. "It was like, 'No, Dad, really I'm buying a farm.'"
Sinisi and his wife, Robin, are starting Old Crow Ranch where they hope to raise livestock on a farm adjacent to a vegetable farm owned by Robin's parents. Old Crow Ranch and the Sinisis represent just one of many new farms started by a new generation of farmers. Partnering livestock with a vegetable operation completes a natural agricultural cycle, he said.
"I think that Robin and I are part of a wave of young farmers," he said, many of whom value not only growing food locally but also conserving agricultural land.
"It benefits more than just the farmer," said Sinisi, who also serves on the board of directors for the Androscoggin Land Trust and the Durham Conservation Commission. "There's a lot more to it than, 'So, this is Steve's farm.'"
Steve & Robin Sinisi
Old Crow Ranch, Durham
Growing up in Wisconsin surrounded by dairy farms, soybeans fields and corn, Steve Sinisi never planned on farming for a living as did generations of his family before him.
"None of my mother's generation ever considered it," he said. "Their parents told them don't do this. I think there was this 'get out of here, go live a better life' sort of thing."
But early experiences helped him realize the value of farming and farms to all lifestyle, prompting him to revive 70 agrarian acres on Davis Road in Durham.
"I grew up in Wisconsin in a little town surrounded by old dairy farms," he said. "Corn, soybeans, it was that kind of ag(riculture) land."
His after-school visits with a neighboring dairy farmer, high school job as a farm-hand, and post-graduation travels to Montana and California — where he worked on farms emphasizing cooperatives and local eating — each pushed him toward agriculture.
"That was the first time I said, 'Wow, someone will pay me to do this,'" he said about working on a farm in California.
From there, he learned about the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and the New England Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, through which he started working as a farm-hand in Whitefield.
In Maine, he also met his wife, Robin, whose parents, Dave and Chris Colson, operate New Leaf Farm on Davis Road in Durham.
When a neighbor approached the Colsons about buying the old Davis farm on Davis Road, Steve, 32, and Robin, 31, stepped up. They purchased 70 acres, 65 of which is preserved through an agricultural conservation easement with help from the Land for Maine's Future Fund through the Royal River Conservation Trust.
"I don't care if it's in my family forever as long as it's a farm," he said, explaining the aesthetic and environmental value agricultural land brings to a town.
Settling on the name "Old Crow Ranch" with the help of Robin, who is finishing work on her master's degree in public health, and their 7-year-old daughter, Steve hopes to raise meat cows, pigs, chickens and hay. He's also in the process of securing loans to buy beef steer.
In addition to reviving Old Crow Ranch, Steve works as help on four other farms throughout the year, carving out time from a busy schedule to work on his own farm.
"Labor of love is one that comes to my mind," he said, describing his work.
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Establishing links
More farmers like Sinisi are turning to farming in Maine as a means of preserving open space aesthetic, nurturing the environment and providing better foods for their communities.
According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture released in February by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of Maine farms has increased by nearly 1,000 from 7,196 farms in 2002 to 8,136 in 2007.
Still a small number, the farms producing more than $5 million have nearly doubled from 14 to 27 farms throughout the state.
"There's been a big jump in number of farms," said John Harker, an agriculture development agent for Maine's Department of Agriculture. "I get calls every week from people who have either bought land and want to farm it or have land and want to do something with it."
Starting farmers tend to be in their 20s and 30s and often come from out of state in search of cheaper land in communities with fewer development pressures, according to Nina Young, who manages land projects for Maine FarmLink and has seen pockets of young farmers establish farms and support networks in areas like Bowdoinham, which is close to larger population centers and also in Skowhegan in the midst of the state's prime farmland.
The nonprofit organization, an outgrowth of the Maine Farmland Trust, helps connect those looking for farmland with those leasing or selling it in an effort to preserve agricultural lands.
Applications from seekers of such land have increased to 150 this year from 12 when the program started five years ago, she said.
"I think people realize it's more of an opportunity than it ever was," she said. A soft economy coupled with food safety scares have drawn increasing attention to growing foods in the community for the community.
Through farming, Young said, "a lot of people realize they can actually be a part of building a community."
Know your food
A market-driven emphasis on knowing who grows food and how it's grown has also contributed a specific growth in small, sustainable farming operations.
Of the state's 8,136 farms, some 882 call themselves organic producers. While not all of those seek organic certification, a process which can take substantial time and money, the number of certified organic producers also increased by about 25 percent from 228 in 2000 to 363 in 2008, according to statistics from the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
In the same period, the number of certified organic acres in Maine has more than quadrupled from 9,363 to 40,870.
Keena Tracy & Zack Henderson
Little Ridge Farm, Lisbon Falls
Before she planted her roots in Lisbon Falls, Keena Tracy, 32, of Little Ridge Farm sprouted her love of farming in Pennsylvania during a two-week stint at an organic farm while her husband, Zachary Henderson, 37, was at graduate school.
After that, the pair partnered with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms to spend four months working at five different farms in France, observing the French fascination with food and cultivating crops on the steep slopes of the Pyrenees.
Tracy, who studied environmental science at Miami University in her home state of Ohio, had been working for conservation organizations, but was disheartened when much of her work ended up on shelves.
Farming offered a more direct connection to the community.
"I fell in love with it, and I haven't stopped since," she said.
After France, the two started scouting farming opportunities in south central Maine, where it would be close enough for Henderson to commute to work.
"It seemed like a progressive state as far as agriculture, and there's a ton of recreation stuff," she said.
She started at Willow Pond Farm in Sabattus with owner Jill Agnew. Agnew then helped Tracy find a homestead on Gould Road in Lisbon. Her parents helped them buy 28 adjacent acres because she wanted to farm land she could call her own.
"It's like your child; you put in so much time and investment and effort, it would be hard to up and leave," she said.
As part of a three-year plan, Tracy built a barn and began cultivating vegetables, fruit, beef, turkey and pork. Tracy works the farm full time while her Henderson, who works at environmental engineering firm Woodard & Curran, helps.
For the first time, Little Ridge Farm will offer produce shares this year, giving community members an opportunity to buy a range of locally grown vegetables and fruit. Aside from strawberries and kohlrabi, she's also raising turkeys, beef and pork and relishing the opportunity to build relationships with community members.
"A lot of people dream about living on a farm," she said. "I want to maintain their romantic dream for them. I try to make it family friendly."
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Nurturing the next generation
Harker attributes the renewed interest in starting small farms to the efforts of groups like the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which has not only raised awareness about locally grown foods but also fostered local growers through training programs for new farmers.
"Back in the (1970s), there was a whole 'back to the land' movement. I think we're seeing that again now," he said.
Today's farm following differs from the one 30 years ago in that groups started by the back-to-the-land movement then are now rooted and ready to support young farmers now.
Andrew Marshall, who directs the journeyperson and apprentice programs for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, which organized in 1972 as the oldest organic farming group in the nation, has also noted an increasing interest in young people looking to farm.
"Both of those programs have grown enormously from one year to the next," he said.
In recent years, the organization's apprentice program that places would-be farmers as farm hands with established farm mentors nets about 115 applications annually, he said.
"This year we're up to 182 applications," he said, about 60 percent of whom will end up working on a farm this year.
Similarly, the organization has doubled its two-year journeyperson program, which supports starting farmers financially and educationally, to accommodate 36 people in the last decade. While perhaps 25 percent of apprentices become career farmers, the expectation is that all journeypersons start their own farming ventures.
Marshall, Harker and Young say the numerical indicators of a bumper crop of new farmers are neither aberrant nor coincidental.
"There are a lot of circumstances that are aligning to make farming look attractive," Marshall said, citing the economic downturn, the explosion of the local foods movement and continued interest in the environment.
"The market exists and people are seeing that and saying, 'This is something that could actually sustain us,'" he said.
Added to that, students who have studied the environmental impacts all through school are identifying sustainable farming as a means to preserve and promote natural landscapes.
"There's this sort of hipster element of this underground urban youth culture where food is becoming really important," he said, as a result out-of-state urbanites are turning to farms. "They want to make a right livelihood. They want to make a difference in their communities, and they're doing that by growing good food."
Nate Drummond & Gabrielle Gosselin
Six River Farm, Bowdoinham
Ivy League degrees in hand, Maine native Nate Drummond, 28, and Gabrielle Gosselin, 27, of Amherst, Mass., are tilling a living from 12 rented acres planted with a diverse sampling of vegetables in Bowdoinham.
Drummond studied history and Gosselin majored in South Asian Studies at Brown University. After graduating, they moved to New York City, where Drummond worked in public health at Columbia University. Gosselin worked with New York City's Green Markets, which brings produce from area farms to the city.
Drummond grew to miss the outdoor labor he enjoyed as a stone mason working near his home in Winterport, and both were becoming increasingly interested in food, factors prompting their move to work on a farm near Albany, N.Y.
"It seemed like something we wanted to try," he said. "It's pretty cool when you get down to it to be growing food for people's tables and restaurants."
Through the Maine FarmLink program, they found land with good soil and existing barns to lease from George Christopher of Bowdoinham in 2007. In three years, they've doubled their production to five acres.
"There's a sort of range in there where you can make it work," Drummond said, referring to the ratio of size to success in farming.
While the pair earned enough selling vegetables to farmers' markets, natural food restaurants and some restaurants last season to forgo winter jobs, it's still early to gauge if farming can support them long-term.
"We don't have a family at this point, and we're not paying a mortgage," he said, not to mention that they're not even farming their own land.
Despite those factors, however, farming still holds promise of a living for them.
"It's not necessarily the easiest one you could choose," he said, but it comes with its own rewards.
"It's intellectually challenging," he said, about trying to coax the most productivity from acres most efficiently, building relationships with buyers, socializing with other farmers and learning from one growing season to the next. "There's a whole diversity of work over the course of the year."
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'Right livelihood'
Marshall's observation stems from the experiences of farmers like Gabrielle Gosselin, 27, and Winterport native Nate Drummond, 28, of Six River Farm in Bowdoinham.
The pair left high education jobs in New York City to a work on a farm outside Albany, N.Y., and focus their energies on growing food.
"We had become increasingly interested in food," Drummond said. "It seemed like something we wanted to try."
Transplanting to Bowdoinham in 2007 to start their own farming enterprise, the couple found a contingent of other farmers like architect-turned-farmer Christopher Cavendish of Fishbowl Farm. Both farms rent land from Bowdoinham resident George Christopher, who wanted to make the land available to new farmers.
"The demand is there. ... I think that's the reason why there's a number of people starting up," Drummond said. "That itself is a great thing for us — having a whole bunch of young farmers in the area. It sort of provides a very nice sort of social community."
Sustaining farmers via sustainable farming
How long this agricultural growth spurt continues depends largely on farmers' ability to cultivate a profit with their produce.
With 54 percent of organic farms grossing less than $10,000 annually and 85 percent of all farms considered part time, small farms seldom provide the sole support for their owners, according to Harker.
This year, he has helped 23 farms create business plans through a state-offered class — one of the largest he's seen. Farms might turn a profit, but many barely pay labor costs and lack the financial footing to cover expenses such as health insurance or retirement benefits, he said.
So it's not necessarily adequate to earn a living.
"There has to be an additional source of income to help feed the family," he said. "It certainly won't pay for the whole family living expenses."
Accordingly, many farm owners will work other jobs in winter or receive support from a spouse who works a full-time job with benefits.
"One of the couple — not always both— is an aspiring farmer," said Maine FarmLink's Nina Young. "The other of the couple maybe has an off-farm job."
Christopher Cavendish
Fishbowl Farm, Bowdoinham
Chris Cavendish grew up in Louisville, Ky., dreaming of architecture, but at age 34 agriculture now serves as his muse.
Since seventh grade, he pursued his career goal, studying at Ball State University in Indiana and later landing a job with an architectural firm in Maine.
He came to Maine following a girl, but a love of the state's landscape and natural resources has kept him here.
When he realized his dream job was edging him toward a mid-life crisis before age 35, he left his career.
"It wasn't rewarding for the stress level; that's really what it amounted to," he said.
Through working as a farmer-in-residence for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, he discovered agriculture offered an alternative.
He established Fishbowl Farm in the center of the Common Ground Fair grounds, working for two years before he started leasing land from George Christopher, a Bowdoinham landowner with a vision for helping young farmers work affordable growing ground.
As soon as he crossed the one-lane bridge to look at the land on Browns Point Road, he knew he wanted to farm the land. He started with four acres and now leases 18, growing as many vegetables as he can on half of that.
He finds his past experiences aid his efforts.
"Architecture is nothing if it's not the orchestration of a series of systems; farming is that orchestration of systems, but living ones," he said.
Not only does his architectural training inform his farming, but plumbing and even pottery skills from past jobs also serve him, he said.
Eventually, he wants to farm his own land in the same area, get married and raise a family in addition to his crops.
"It's a lifestyle," he said. "You have to expect that the farm owns you."
With the territory comes a relentless summer schedule, continual risk management and constant effort to achieve greater efficiency on a small patch of ground on the banks of Merrymeeting Bay.
"Nine to 10 acres suits me for the lifestyle that I want to live," he said. "I work like a pauper, and I eat like a king."
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In the case of the Old Crow Ranch in Durham, Steve Sinisi works four other farm jobs and his wife, Robin, is studying to earn her master's degree in public health.
At Little Ridge Farm in Lisbon Falls, owner Keena Tracy runs the farm while her husband, Zach Henderson, works at an environmental engineering firm.
But many starting farmers realize establishing a farm takes time, Young said.
"They're much more wily. They're not so much pie-in-the-sky about farming," she said. "They have a plan: they know they want a diversified vegetable farm."
Often that plan involves selling directly to consumers through farmers markets and farm shares, which in Maine can provide the margin of profitability necessary to support a farm.
"The big thing that makes it viable is these farmers' markets," said Chas Gill of Kennebec Flower Farm in Bowdoinham.
At 49, Gill has been marketing flowers at farmers' markets for 20 years and is currently organizing the second season of a revamped farmers' market in Bowdoinham. The influx of new farmers helps to widens the profitability margin of all farmers at the markets.
"Five years ago, I was a little bit concerned because there were no young farmers," he said. "Bowdoinham is like this hub now. We have lots of new farmers."
Far from stifling each others' efforts, the presence of more farmers growing more foods shores up the success of the market for locally grown foods by giving consumers more choices, more market locations and more access to farmers, Gill said.
"I feel like we're all still excited for each other," said Tracy of Lisbon, who will often compare notes with other young farmers at sustainable farming conferences.
Farmers also benefit from Maine's agricultural identity of small farming, according to MOFGA's Andrew Marshall.
"Maine has been marginalized by the mainstream, the sort of industrial ag(riculture) juggernaut," he said. As a result, people expect to find farmers' markets and farm stands here.
"Smaller farms tend to have a competitive advantage," he said.
It's an advantage allowing young farmers to sustain their labor and their lifestyle.
"It's economically viable now. You can make a living now. There was a time when that wasn't really the case," Gill said.
Mix in variables like health, weather and capital costs of land and equipment, and the challenge of growing roots in and for their community becomes a mission.
"It's meaningful work to me," said Cavendish of Fishbowl Farm. "I feel like I'm doing the work for the world that I was supposed to be doing."
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