Climbing on Interstate 95 traveling to Augusta for Maine Agriculture Farm Trade show.
Yesterday hitched a ride with my partner Meg who is a New Limerick Maine organic farmer up here in Aroostook County. We climbed in the van and headed down I-95 to attend the Augusta Maine 85th agriculture farm trade show.
We met, listened to the Maine agriculture farm commissioner Amanda Beal.
Got to network with lots of other agriculture farm producers, talk to vendors at this 85th Maine agriculture farm trade show.
Attended a couple break out sessions to tackle farm operation problems everyone has to hunt down solutions for in Maine farming.
I love farming, grew up on one and still own the family agriculture spread where the four boys, my brothers and I were raised.
By renting out the Maine farm in the video for agriculture organic farming to Nature’s Circle farm, to Meg I can keep my hand in digging in the dirt.
The thing that hits you at the Maine farm trade show is how diverse, how small and precious the agriculture operations really are in Maine.
Nice Antennae. Maine Honey Bee Producing Out Of This World Nectar Food.
You have to stay small to survive and to keep your expenses low to the ground on a Maine farm.
Nothing Compares For Taste, For Health Benefits! Wild Maine Blueberries.
The love of raising, growing something and the farming lifestyle is the Maine attraction.
Farm to table is so important and finding a market to make agriculture in Maine sustainable is the constant battle.
Making A Living Peddling A Product Made Form A Small Maine Farm.
Teenie weenie itsy bitsy Maine micro farms make it happen with keep it simple homesteading.
If you keep it small farming in Maine, the rewards are rich and home grown. Nothing is taken for granted and your family raised on the family farm really benefit.
Big And Small. The Equipment To Farm Is Old And New. Depends On How Deep You Want To Go Out On The Financial Limb.
It was refreshing to see Maine Future Farming high school members in attendance at the agriculture show in Augusta.
Blue Corduroy Jackets, FFA Future Farmers Of America Members At The Maine Agriculture Trade Show! These Ladies From Mars Hill, Aroostook County.
I list and sell them all the time and Maine is a vast rural state. Where you can know your local Maine farmer.
Where In Maine Do Your Farm And What Kind Of Agriculture Are You Involved With Today?
When you think of draft horses, not just big horsepower Maine farm tractors. The farming types are diverse and have to be to carve out a living you really have to be born into to enjoy. Not that long ago, everyone was a farmer, agriculture was kind.
I did see a booth at the Maine farm show for the state grange.
Everything under the Sun arranged around the Augusta Civic Center for this three day Maine AG farm show.
Maine Agriculture Trade Show In Augusta Civic Center.
Break out sessions to work on a slew of topics. Big industrial drones for spraying and more.
Farming In Maine. Do You Team A Pair Of Draft Horses, Mules, Ponies?Agriculture Uses For Drones Of All Kinds And Prices.
Glad I tagged along and zipped down to Augusta for the Maine agriculture farm show. Hope you enjoyed the videos, the farm images collected yesterday from my travels.
Thank you for watching, sharing the Me In Maine blog posts. I appreciate you being out in the audience on anything the state Maine.
Thought about taking life to a whole new level and dreaming of farming in Maine? The four letters “FARM” is a pretty big word. This blog post jumps into the topic how to start a farm in Maine. Reach out with questions about Maine farming.
Wide Open Unspoiled Farm Land In Maine. Want Some?
For starters, the farm up in Maine, are you thinking using the land for now on vacations?
With the plan to slowly pull away from expensive city living to trade it all in for wide open space, no locked doors, zip for traffic? Then Maine land, just land where you bring up the travel trailer RV camper and part it for low cost Maine vacations. Eventually, when everything in your life lines up correctly, you pull the trigger and build the house of your dreams. With everything you wanted that you never had in previous houses and a few items you did.
You will never go hungry on a Maine farm.
I did not eat a lot of rice growing up but we sure have a lot of home grown Maine potatoes. There are so many ways to cook and prepare a Maine potato and I know them all. On the family farm, we also grew soldier, yellow eye and Jacob’s cattle dry beans. Unlike potatoes, what you harvest one year can last into the next to sell. You just have to hope and pray it is not a wet fall when you have to harvest the dry beans.
Water is not your friend when dealing with dry rattling beans inside pods that wick the water and start to swell.
You want that process to begin when soaking beans for the Saturday night supper meal. But not out in the field when trying to have a dry harvest.
Here’s over 80 acres of Maine farm land for sale, watch the real estate video.
The three buildings you saw and heard about in this Maine farm video can be worked into an agricultural use.
The pasture farm fields are seeded down, all bush hogged and ready to go. Maine land that is totally wooded means clearing the forest, removing stumps and lots of prep work ahead. Maine farm land that is high test soil and maintained makes the lifestyle change go a lot smoother. Buying a farm in Maine is done for a lot of reason. The land investment gives the owner a piece of mind, security. It is purchased by many as an insurance policy for life. It is the next step and helps a person knowing where they are head. Slowly or quickly if things go south where they live now.
Real estate buyers also purchase farmland in Maine for multi-generational use.
So everyone in the family can have an acre or two to build a camp, home, heck put up a yurt. Gram and Gramp are on the farm up in Maine too. I had one couple who had both sets of in-laws with them when they purchased 115 acres on a river in Oakfield Maine. There was a house and the plan to slowly create more. Lots of auxiliary buildings around the Maine farm house happens. The emphasis is on the Maine farm barn, the machine shed, the chicken house, all the other pens with standing or box stalls.
Where I Grew Up, Your Me In Maine Blogger. On A Farm In Maine.
When you get the itch to start a Maine farm, when there are no buildings, the first one you construct is usually a barn, machine shed.
The emphasis is on the farm, living off the land. Making a paycheck by tilling the soil, managing the wooded sections is priority one. Or staking the pastures with fencing to contain the critters. There are many who start a farm in Maine that bank everything on the plunge into agriculture. But it helps if one person in the couple has a real job with benefits and a steady income. Or if you are retired and going small scale, micro farming, you have a “ticket”. That retirement income helps stabilize and keep the farm dream alive and well.
The big post and beam barns on Maine farms are like dinosaurs.
Slowly going to their knees and dying their last waspy breath due to lack of use and maintenance. Large round bales, not the small square or rectangular ones for hay have taken over. Putting hay up in the loft of a gable or gambrel roof barn is not done so much now. Labor costs are rising and if you can see daylight through holes in the barn roof, it’s whoa. Wet hay molds. Hay cut, conditioned, baled and put into storage with moisture in it can heat up and even cause a barn fire from spontaneous combustion.
Lots Of Full Time New Agriculture Producers Springing Up With Amish Farms in Maine.
Starting a farm in Maine, it’s not all fun and glamor.
Might want to wear your old clothes. Bring an extra set of gloves. Eat a hearty farmhouse breakfast. You are dealing with the weather in Maine that is always changing and unpredictable. Those totally surviving off the Maine farm land have worked a forty hour week by Tuesday noon. Spring planting and fall harvest of crops is never ending. Everything is counting on getting the seeds into the spring time ground and harvested off the land in fall. Frost going in or out is to be avoided at all costs.
Before you farm anything on for animals or crops in your pasture fields, where is your market going to be on the farm in Maine? You invested a lot of time, money, seed, fertilizer, etc for nothing if you can’t sell what you produce. You May be super duper at growing a crop but if no one wants to buy it, that’s no fun. That won’t keep the wolf or the bill collectors from your farmhouse door. Farming in Maine rides on a business chassis.
You have to be an accountant, good at marketing, a master at cruising the farm operation looking for loose ends and an expert at cutting through red tape.
All the time and it never lets up. Farming is a jealous master unless you have a ‘ticket” and keep it a hobby amateur operation.
Local farmers market like this one below create a sales outlet as shown in this Maine community video.
Local sales in the center of a small Maine down town. Thinking small potatoes, know your buyer and they know their local farmer. But something more grand, of growing large scale in mind? Not just selling out of the the Maine farm land or your garden. So now we’re talking about raising something on the farm in Maine that will need storage? To peddle and put up for the trip to some far away food market. For beyond the traditional growing season and not just field run to sell it as fresh as it will ever be. Okay, do you want to grow slow and nice and easy? To avoid a big bank mortgage that keeps you tossing and turning awake nights?
Unfortunately there is a cheap food policy in our country.
Big Barns In Maine. They Fall To Their Knees If Not Maintained.
That is why it helps to live where the cost to do it is lower to the ground. Maine is just such a place and blessed with hi test fertile low cost farm soil. Like most small businesses, is it volume. Getting bigger, watching your costs knowing the profit is in the expenses. That’s why earlier in the blog post on how to start a farm in Maine asked you if you were talking small or jumping in hook, line and sinker.
The most home grown and do as much yourself as you can without hiring out kind of Maine farming is the most enjoyable.
Small, controllable and you are hands on involved in every aspect of the farm in Maine operations. It also makes it new and always something new needing attention. Your kids growing up on a Maine farm learn worth ethic, skills, and healthier living being outdoors. Off the device, off the couch and self absorbed. That’s not the lifestyle when there are chores to do on the Maine farm operation.
No farmer, no food and more folks are realizing how to be self sufficient, independent means learning how to feed yourself.
Thought About Starting A Farm In Maine?
I grew up on the farm in Maine above and here to help with pointers and advice. Like people, Maine farm soils are different. I just happen to know a dependable Maine real estate broker with fire in his belly about farms (blushing ten shades of red). Reach out, let’s talk, learn more about how to start a farm in Maine no matter what size or kind it is! Thank you for stopping by and learning a little more about how to start a farm in Maine.
Farming in Maine, it was the first noble profession.
Farming In Maine, Transplanting Or Direct Seeding?
Because feeding yourself and your family is life and death important. No farmer, no food, no more life is the most basic law of the jungle. Farming in Maine started out pretty small potatoes in the beginning. Creating what to serve up for your own meals, using what you could produce only. Long hours, plenty of patience, not much in the way of tools to make the farm chores easier. Taking care of yourself first. Before expanding into feeding others with the extra farm fresh food from the Maine farm pasture fields.
The early Maine farm settlers grew corn, beans, squash and raised oats, barley. Plenty of loose hay for their animals who needed something to eat too.
The apple trees created free food like the wild blueberry, strawberry and raspberry patches. Fishing along the rocky coastline, out on lakes or casting the line into rivers contributed to the what’s for dinner routine.
Team Of Horses For Farming In Farm, Still Used.
Southern Maine small farms began to dot the early map when Vacationland was still technically part of the Massachusetts bay colony. Self sufficient living and pretty much roll and grow your own was the norm.
Maine Farm Tractors. Modern 6 To 8 Row Big Ones, Older Two Row Ones.
Hard life, long hours, no guarantee of reward. Creating more than enough for a food surplus to feed others was slow to happen. Harsh weather, pests and lack of machinery to increase the Maine farm field yield. It made it hard to get ahead of the hand to mouth existence.
And no hustling bustling highways to sail on or an iron railroad to get the Maine farm products to large consuming markets population centers to the south. Lack of transportation options to readily access the Maine farm produce kept agriculture operations pretty Maine home grown small and simple.
Where I live in Northern Maine, family farms dotted the countryside up and down all the country roads in every direction.
That was the norm in rural Maine. Now fewer but larger commercial Maine farm operations create the produce for row crops. The small family beef, dairy and poultry farms too on the same glide path to extinction. Replaced with a handful of larger more efficient operations that can thrive on the economy of scale. Your profit is found in the expenses and no room for loose as a goose or slip shod farming practices.
Despite this national trend, Maine has more micro farmers than ever. The COVID19 pandemic has only accelerated that back to the land agricultural trend.
The size of the farm operation depends how deep you want to go. Whether you plan to mortgage to the hilt, and go big. Or take over a family farm smaller spread and stay manageable. Where everything is paid for and the equipment you use is yesteryear antique but owned lock, stock and barrel.
Early Morning On The Farm In Maine, Nothing Like This Time Of Day To Reflect On Life, Get Centered. Field Grain Just Harvested, Hay With Be Baled From The Chaff Of The Barley Oats Crop Planted On This Field.
Farming profits have always been found in the expenses. How well a Maine farm operation is run is key.
And more than just having a green thumb. Today’s farmer is high tech and savvy across the board on a multitude of disciplines besides planting, cultivating, harvest (repeat). Dairy farming, both my parents came from family farms that grew potatoes but also had milk cows. My mom from a family of eleven who all had jobs on the dairy farm. My dad one of four who had a mile route in town. There were lots of small family dairy farms in Maine that delivered milk products by a wheel cart in summer, sleigh pung with runners in the winter snow.
Got Milk? Maine Dairy Farming Is The Most Intense And Round The Clock Time Consuming.
Cheese can be made to store on shelves, butter and Maine farm milk not so easy to leave around at room temperature.
Refrigeration was needed to advance dairy farming to go beyond just serving product to the producer’s own table. Maine Central Railroad refrigerated train cars delivered dairy products to Bangor, Portland, Boston far away markets. This was long before Thermo King units were bolted on the front of 53′ long reefer trailer units. To create just the right storage conditions during transport from rural Maine to urban produce markets.
Pretty To Look At, Delicious Tasting Too! When The Maine Farm Food Is Close To Home Grown And Raised.
Butter and cream rather than cheese products became the goal of many Maine farm dairies in what they delivered by train to out of state markets.
Silage in silos helped boost production beyond just hay and grain so dairies could increase production to serve beyond just their small Maine town customer base. More on early Maine farming slides and history. In the late 1960’s, the push to get away from a monoculture of agriculture playing just one note in the farm song. Over farming one crop year after year. Because of that age old habit of predominantly planting potatoes in Aroostook County, sugar beet farming was introduced. Grains had been more of a rotation crop only. To give the ground a rotation rest rather than to help pay the farming bills.
Freddie Valshing reintroduced what Maine farmers had already grown along with hops back in the 1880’s.
The return introduced spud farmers to a new sugar beet refinery in Easton Maine. Complete with piggy back rail delivery yards in the Houlton area and other locations in the Aroostook County crown of Maine part of the state. My Dad and Mom planted eighty acres of sugar beets, invested in a harvester and were committed to this extra crop. The one harvested after the potatoes were dug. The foray into sugar beets petered out because of a shift in the audience habits for sweeteners. Also because the one armed Freddy Valshing was not in it for the long haul but the quick buck.
Give Me A Beat… No No, The Other Kind Of Maine Farm Beet.
Why sugar beets did not stick in the Maine farming crop rotation?
There was a resistance to anything interfering with spud production alone which the majority of Maine farmers prescribed to historically. More on sugar beets in Maine and how things went wrong trying to introduce a new farm field staple for agriculture production diversity.
The type of dirt, the condition of the soil all factor into how the Maine farming, living off the land dream is going to turn out for you. Creating wealth and nutrition from the good Earth with hard work, patience and mastering the learning curve. It is not so attractive to many.
Farming in Maine is not for everyone or those dependent on an hourly wage and a secure weekly pay check.
There are many sacrifices and long hours involved with the odds stacked against you as valuable lessons are learned. The longer you can hang on and adapt to change to all the challenging farm condition variables. Then the more experiences you can draw from to stay on your Maine farm property spread.
Working nine to five on a regular job makes hobby farming in Maine possible but restrictive.
That real job is your “ticket” to stay afloat financially if you run a time ship with your saving and spending. With whole hog farming and you are all in or out, the stakes suddenly are much higher. Having an income that keeps coming into the bank account helps your sleep patterns. If one mate in the partnership has a steady income, hopefully hospitalization benefits, that can be a bonus. Or the only way this family farm in Maine is going to get off the ground.
The farm I own in Maine is leased out to an organic grower, Nature’s Circle.
Starting a farm growing lots of initial crops without a market is not going to work from a business perspective. You need to know who the potential customers are and to tailor your farming to their produce requirements.
What will the customer pay, are there local restaurants, farmers markets, the local area audience to buy what you raise from your piece of Maine dirt acreage?
Don’t just grow what you like to consume, learn what your audience will buy. Verify the market before kicking the Maine farm into gear. Farming rides on a business chasis remember?
Winter Snow And Ice Time Spent Planning What To Grow, Which Field To Raise It On At The Maine Farm. To Begin Again Come Spring Time Temperatures And The Farm Soil Warms Up, Drys Out.
What is your Maine farm design?
Map out your farm fields and define how you are putting each area to work in your farm plan. My Dad always preached “you have to have a system”. Plan your work, work your plan kinda thinking. Winter is an excellent time to reflect on the year before, the one ahead and what to plant where and why figured out as snow piles up and farming slows down.
Become friendly and familiar with your local USDA soil and water conservation agency if you plan to have success farming in Maine .
Funding for your small scale farm projects may be available to transform your Maine land into a farming operation. Fields not used can be seeded down with a conservation mix to help them get built up with soil amendments. Tired, over farmed abandoned Maine land needs to be nursed back to health. Winter rye, a ground cover added to a field helps soil health, prevents erosion too.
Cows In Maine Wait For The Flakes Of Hay, Can Of Grain, Fresh Water To Go With The Daily Staples.
Drainage, tiles installed to drain wet soils that are slow to warm up and that make the farming operation mired down.
Delays getting these fields planted and pulling stuck tractors out of them because of poorly drained wet soils is not fun. If you have enough farm ground to rotate your crops you have a leg up on the smaller patch of dirt agriculture operator who does not have their luxury.
Hi. Maine Dairy Cows Itching To Get Turned Out, To Kick Up Their Heels, To Roll In And Eat The New Spring Field Clover.
The conservation seed mix broadcast on the farm field pastures to grow rich and strong. Sometimes on a Maine farm it starts with animals clearing your weeds and brush and bushes first. They can help get farm pasture fields tidy and groomed if you have the time. How fast you need the Maine farm land cleared is part of your consideration. Waist high weeds are not fun. And is your Maine farm organic or convention using chemicals to tackle prepping your soil. Lots of compost hauled in to prepare your soil and get it nutrition balanced is the foundation of anything you do after than on your Maine farm.
Direct seed or hand transplanted in your prepared soil beds on your farming in Maine operation?
No till seeding where the ground is not disturbed and roots already established hold the soil together is one approach. Transplanting seedlings can jump start your farm operation. Building hoop houses, using a greenhouse nursery instead of direct seeded field crops will optimize your agriculture operation. How long is the growing season for whatever you plan to raise comes after who are the people you will serve in your marketing brand.
Do You Know Your Maine ABC’s? Can You, Will You Say Or Sing Them With Me Please?
What is the personality of your Maine farm and who are you going to be catering to with whatever you raise.
Who you are going to attract for a repeat audience to buy what your grow on the Maine farm? Part of what you end up doing is providing what your produce customers want. Educating them to broaden their purchases into other items you introduce them with care.
Spreadsheets, analyzing your Maine farm production data and study of what the market sale data shows. This is not the most fun in your day to day farm operations but the key to a successful sustaining farm business survival plan.
Local produce, meat and dairy and we’re not even talking operations like oyster farming raised from the ocean depths off the Maine coast.
Local farm to table is alive and well in Maine and there is a resurgence in smaller farms like micro breweries.
Where local agriculture production and supporting your area small Maine farm enterprises is healthy for the family and community.
Building out of pocket and pretty much hand to mouth as you go is not a lifestyle well suited for many. With the prevalence of entitlement in today’s society, the working like a dog nip and tuck to survive is not the lifestyle choice of many. Doing what you have to do to stay on your Maine farm. To make it sustainable would be for the birds. For many too soft and just not so gung ho committed to working the Maine land soil to eek out a simple living.
On the small Maine farm, money is replaced with creative resourcefulness and a ton of patience.
To carefully put it all in perspective. To find gratitude in what you do possess and accomplish rather than lament whining about what you lack. Teaching your children work ethic, the responsibility of chores on the Maine farm and developing their skill set prepares them for anything that comes down the pike to deal with in life just fine.
To do more than merely survive and persevere but to come out on top and prosper with the right positive attitude and respect for how best to use your time and money to get ahead of the farming learning curve.
On the small, medium size farm in Maine where it is pretty much work around the clock through all the seasons that play out on the kitchen wall calendar, your focus is meat and potato basic. Down to Earth simple and very disciplined.
Work comes before play and labor is your pleasure offering it’s own reward in the farming in Maine accomplishment.
Making it better than it was. Or just maintaining the status quo in the tough of war with Mother Nature and the market to break even. To monetize on the other end of from what you raise or grow on the Maine family farm. To offset all that sunrise to sundown labor, letting go of hard earned finances, and yes, taking a chance.
Right Out Of The Earth, Freshly Dug Maine Potatoes Just Seeing Daylight After Being Just Harvested From A Farm Field.
The calculated risk involves a little gambling on what is the best course of action for the family farm. Where you are not wearing a tie or pinned to the wall by a corporate World office desk. The steel toe work boots, warm flannel shirt over the long underwear and Car-hart outerwear wardrobe that replaces the sports coat and button down dress shirt and shiny shoes.
Farming in Maine where you are up at the crack of dawn doing the feeding and watering routine and at the same time pondering machinery repairs that lie ahead.
The kind that require you to work with what you have rather than just trot into town to pick up expensive parts you simply can not afford. Welding, brazing, bolting together bits and pieces from saved not thrown away materials that get re-purposed. Farming with broken machinery because it’s the only option teaches you how to squeeze more out of something many would just discard as junk and seemingly worthless.
Being up against it and knowing if it is to be it is up to me does nor hurt a person but challenges them and makes them grateful for the little things that retail therapy does not artificially create.
Awareness of the center of your World focus which is the family farm brings you down to Earth and clears the heart and head. To see clearly what’s what on the agricultural spread where you wear many hats and do several jobs.
Farming in Maine does require total immersion and just not everyone’s cup of tea.
But sadly, there was a time in history when 96% of us were farmers of some sort because it was basic survival and the cornerstone of small rural Maine living for the bulk of the sparse population. Hope this farming in Maine blog post is food for thought and helpful.
Food insecurity, what do the two words mean if you live in Maine?
Well for starters, the first time I heard the expression “food insecurity” I did not think about not having enough or any. But where did the food come from and what was it sprayed with, how was it handled by field workers, in transport from field to my point of purchase, etc. I grew up on a Maine potato and grain farm and we had lean years but always ate well. With big vegetable truck gardens, an endless supply of potatoes and a root cellar stocked from dirt floor to over my head to draw from to make it close to home hands on foodstuffs. For true field to table, fruit orchard, poultry, beef, dairy critters to provide what went into the meal production.
Food insecurity is defined as …
Trimming Beets At Nature’s Circle, A Local Organic Farming Operation In Northern Maine.
“food in·se·cu·ri·ty
noun
the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. 1.”more than 800 million people live every day with hunger or food insecurity as their constant companion”.
Not knowing where your next meal or snack is coming from messes up the three meals a day routine, the you can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.
In a state like Maine where farming is big, agriculture is all around us. Going hungry is harder to fathom. You can always glean fields, there is plenty of food harvested but lots more left behind to just rot into the ground. Help yourself, just ask the farmer and say thanks. Because more mechanized farm operations don’t get everything from the field that could be what’s for your breakfast, lunch, dinner. But it is not economical for the big scale farmer to go back and scour because hundreds of acres to harvest before frost sets in and that’s all she wrote.
But the quality of the food, the nutritive value especially for youngsters with developing brains, growing bodies. Plenty of good food wins the day. Not tons of convenience items with empty nutrition that can be bought cheaply. But rob dietary nutrition of the essential vitamins and trace element ingredients. The eight out of ten folks living in a city where the most jobs are don’t have the same options for free food straight from the field to supply what is on the grocery list. They can’t have a garden because just no space around them in the hustle bustle.
Reduced quality, less variety adds to the food insecurity discussion to broaden the scope as defined by the USDA. Discomfort, weakness, illness with prolonged food insecurity is a cancer of a different type. Than the ones that attack certain organs or that like to spread and travel around the body like wildfire. That claim the lives of loved ones in our families and communities.
Do you worry about food running out and your cupboards being Old Mother Hubbard bare?
In cities, just in time grocery store stocking the shelves would mean havoc if trucking stopped for two or three days. Storms and weather disturbances bear this out as panic happens on the retail level.
Family Farms, Maine Has An Increase And The Average Age Of Farmers Is Dropping!
Like a cold Maine winter challenges the wood pile supply when you have five cords stacked in the shed or filling your cellar but are chewing it up quicker than you planned.
Knowing you may not have enough fuel or food for your family to keep them warm or fed is what keeps a parent awake at night. When money is short, programs to take up the slack get over taxed, reduced or phased out altogether.
Food and shelter, safety are the biggest basic needs a person could have. Providing for your family, the young sprouts is a component of love as a good parent. Which everyone needs to feel important, to feel loved, worthwhile and have hope. Good food, in great supply is a wonderful basic staple. And can the locals in a small Maine community prepare it just so.
Anyone working in education knows the anxiety of kids skipping meals because there is nothing to to feast on.
And what it does to add to the distraction and dull the focus of the student needing the education. But the lack of energy or oomph. Just not feeling up to par because of sheer hunger. The week before a school vacation are happy times for those heading out on a tropical sea cruise or a visit to see Mickey or Minnie in the sunny south. But when your Maine home is cold, there is no food and the atmosphere is stressed because of missing parents or ones that fight, there is nothing to look forward to when a vacation arrives. School is the routine, with food injected to round out the day in the classrooms and roaming the halls in the educational shuffle from the gym to the library and hopefully not detention.
The days heading out of a school vacation back into the three “R’s” in the classroom are hard on educators and students too.
Because the adjustment from a week, a holiday that was not fun with no food, cold and harsh conditions at home. All that follows the unhappy student back into the rows of desks with the black board upfront and the apple on the desk. The hungry child living in poverty conditions did not get a real vacation and has to begin feeding the mind and nourishing the soul to develop skills to be self sufficient outside of the educational bubble.Have you ever run into someone that was poor growing up and did not like it, carries a chip on their shoulder of bitterness and regret? It isn’t fair for a kid to be hungry, to go without food.
The Bees Are Busy Pollinating The Maine Potato Fields In Summer.
Or I know of someone that knew hunger growing up and missed meals, went to bed hungry and who now works at a food pantry because of it. To make sure less kids and older know that same feeling down in your gut of going without food or good nutrition.
Do you support a cause like backpack for kids in your local area?
Who fill up the empty sack to have bus drivers distribute to households that lack much in the cupboards at no fault of the child in those homes.
During the school year, backpacks with non-perishable items are filled up on a Wednesday, taken to the school on Friday, and head home with the children to be returned via the child turning in the empty bags on Monday.
Everything repeated the following Wednesday which is fine as long as the yellow school bus is on its run. Reducing hunger for children is so important to their education, esteem, general well being. Summer away from school’s dinner bell ringing or if the back pack support team needs a break in the food line bucket brigade, kids go hungry of the good stuff, any foodstuff and on their own in fending for themselves.
Low cost or free meals that are nutritious and balanced are provided to over 31 million American students in our country.
When you scan a row of kids at a concert or at a sporting event or out in the community and obesity seems to be another dietary problem. Not because of not enough food but poor eating habits of the wrong items or too much that adds the weight and affects the health of the youngster. Who is carrying around the physical weight beyond the design of his or her body along with the self esteem issues for being large.
Seed Potatoes In Maine, The Best Creates Large Yields Of Great Nutritious Produce.
Part of fixing health care and making it more affordable starts in good eating habits as a kid.
Obesity affects genetics, alters the behaviors and attitudes of kids that get less and less exercise the larger they become. A healthy diet, a child physically active is happier and not eating out of boredom or self medicating to band-aid a larger dietary wound.
Good diet, eating habits and nutritious food helps children grow strong, maintain a healthy weight throughout childhood. And leads to less burden on the expensive health care system because a healthier population does not depend on it so greatly.A harmony, a balance of energy goes into activity and calorie consumption. From the right foods and beverages to prevent excess weight gain.
Healthy eating, being physically active helps to prevent chronic diseases that are killers like type 2 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. Eating balanced meals, combined with exercise improves mental clarity and helps reduced mood swings. To stave off depression because of the poor self image from overeating, under exercising and being out of control with food consumption.
Did you or anyone grow up exposed to Maine farming?
Do you have a garden, is there space to have one where you live or does your community provide space to scratch the dirt, plant seeds to cultivate and nourish to get to the harvest stage?
Maine, lots of space and more are turning to homesteads, farmsteading because what is most important is missing on their dinner tables. Good food and Maine farming tie in with healthier lifestyles and being outdoors, working the land to be in better shape as the secondary gain. Maine farming agriculture numbers are up in more ways than one.
A fall harvest worker needs a solid breakfast food fortification under his or her belt to do the day justice. Lots of snacks. The same attention given to the hearty sandwiches produced in the early morning dark to head to the fields.
Hard physical labor helping area Maine potato farmers get the crop out of the ground. Delivered to the darker than the inside of a cow storage bins. Safely, with all the worker’s arms, legs, limbs and fingers kept intact. The same number heading in as completing the Maine potato harvest the safety goal.
Oldest son may have his last day for a local Maine potato farmer today. Danny Corey grows 800 acres of the Maine spuds. Lots of acreage of grains too. Shifting focus to the tablestock and seed market after months of careful growing round the clock attention. Tending the Maine farm fields.
From planting, to cultivating, hoeing, spraying to avoid blight, then harvest makes Maine farming one big high tech production.
The farm I own is rented to a Maine spud grower with 500 acres of potatoes. And many area Maine farmers are wrapping it up this week with warm temperatures to complete the out of the ground fall harvest operation.
Dedication to spraying, an expensive operation this year to contain, avoid blight and lots of rain fall during the growing season added tension to the potato growing gamble. Ruts in the fields from the continuous spraying even though new high tech spray coupe’s are not heavy weights and designed to get in and out of fields treading lightly. Controlling the moisture is a relationship with Mother Nature that is up and down, contentious at best.
As the loads of potatoes in bulk bodies or barrels come in to the spud storage houses, how wet the harvest conditions are determines how much dirt, soil leaves the field. Add to the harvester process on a windy day with blowing dust, fine dirt exiting the same field and slowly the natural soil level lowers.
With the plows, harrows, discs year after year digging in to the soil, keeping the soil in place, in the field and not washed away during down pours is an on going campaign.
You do not want water laying in the field, rotting potatoes.
Nor rain racing toward a nearby stream, brook, river, lake, pond carrying nutrients, dirt in to a nearby water habitat. Drainage ditches, French drains, contour planting all designed to help soil conservation and keep the dirt in the field. The soil from pans under graders in the potato houses is brought back, put over the bald spots called field ledge.
Breakfast is ready, Jo Jo the potato worker Alex gives a ride north to Monticello is here to have a fresh cup of black coffee. The kitchen full of chatter, laughter.
And talk about hopefully the last day of Maine potato harvest.
Only three acres of purples to harvest in an operation that chews up 75 or more acres per day if all conditions are right. If the farming operation stays humming, purring.
But yesterday’s bin piler conveyor breakdowns, moisture increasing in the field both just enough for a set back to keep from wrapping up the potato harvest operation. To avoid another day of field and potato house work. It is a high tech three ring circus to keep air harvesters working, windrowers feeding them with spuds of all colors, varieties, shapes, sizes. Not a horse and one row farming operation any more.
Maine, come see our fertile fields, roam the woods, sample the recreation water and meet the down to earth people.
Hay Balers, Adding Twine, Stacking The Small Square Bales.
What is it like to work, live on a Maine farm? Open house tours on 112 Maine farms happens July 24th through out the sixteen counties of Vacationland.
The 22nd year of celebrating the rural farming in Maine flavor to the public is called “Open Farm Day”.
Maine farming is not just potatoes, blueberries, grains and broccoli. More than dairy and beef. Or a few chickens, small animals with hobby farming level of activity. Here in Maine, farming is sustainable and the owners of these family spreads, properties are passionate about living off the land.
To find out more about “Open House Maine Farm Tours” and to locate the nearest working operation to you, log on to scan the list. Or call 207.287.3871 and learn much more than this Maine blog post provides about getting the down home, up close and personal farm tour with your family, friends.
See real working Maine farms in operation.
You’re invited, expected for the education.
Farming in Maine has become more visible as shoppers for wholesome, close to home grown produce are supporting them with eagerness. Maine’s “Open House” visiting hours are 10 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Bring the kids, get them exposed to field tours, milking, hay rides, petty zoos, nature trails, plenty of scenery. And maybe some product tasting, sampling too! Maine, one beautiful, rural agricultural state second to none.
