Explore Maine Farms

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The story of farming in Maine is evolving.

Dig into our robust media catalog of films, photography, podcasts, and more to meet farmers in our Farm Network, learn how farmers adapt to a changing environment, and explore what we can do together to build a thriving agricultural economy. 

You can help share the exciting, complex, and evolving story of farming in Maine when you send a story to a friend, or share one on your social media channels!

Watch: Films

Thriving Farms, Thriving Maine

Hear from Wormell Farms, Hart Farm, and Harvesting Good about how Maine farms sustain our communities, power our economies, and continue Maine's legacy of farming -- and how it all starts with protecting farmland. Film by Lone Spruce Creative.

Continuing Maine's Farming Legacy

Brendon and Brianna Wormell raise beef on their farm in Cumberland, just 20 minutes outside of Portland. MFT worked with Brendon’s grandparents to protect the 78-acre farm with an agricultural easement in 2016 – and worked with Brendon and Brianna in 2023 to add an Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value (OPAV) to ensure the protected farm stays in the hands of working farmers. These steps made the property affordable for Brendon and Brianna – and helped Brendon’s grandparents retire.

Feeding Maine's People & Economies

Harvesting Good has a strategic goal of providing enough food for all food-insecure Mainers by 2025, and is investing millions of dollars in Maine farms and processors to produce and flash-freeze vegetables for distribution through Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine and supermarket shelves. To reach this goal, farm suppliers like Circle B Farms in Caribou need to increase their broccoli production – but they need affordable and accessible farmland to expand. Agricultural easements keep farmland available for agriculture forever and help farm businesses to acquire land more cost-efficiently.

Sustaining Maine's Communities

Drawn by Maine’s supportive & tight-knit farming community, first generation farmers Andrew and Becky Toothacker moved to Maine to start a farm of their own in 2019. Through MFT’s Maine FarmLink service, they found the Hart Farm property in Holden, which has been a fixture of the community for more than a hundred years, but hadn’t been farmed for decades. Andrew and Becky now produce diversified vegetables, flowers, pastured pork, and grass-fed beef on the 160 acre farm. It was the agricultural easement on this property that helped make it accessible and the Toothackers' dream possible.

Schoppee Farm

We want to show you how member support protects farmland, enables access to locally farmed products, and creates jobs that fuel the local economy. Meet Ben and Allison Edwards of Schoppee Farm in Machias, eighth-generation farmers who are bringing new life to their 200-year old family farm. In summer 2022, in partnership with Maine Coast Heritage Trust, we protected 269 acres at Schoppee Farm, ensuring the continuity of farming in Downeast Maine for generations to come. Films by Chris Battaglia.

Growing a vibrant farm and community Downeast

As hemp farmers, Schoppee Farm’s growing season, fall harvest, and year-round product operations contribute to the local economy, and are a piece of the puzzle in keeping folks employed and putting down roots in Downeast Maine.

Eighth-generation, but first-time farmers

Schoppee Farm was established in 1823 as a dairy farm, but when that operation closed in the 1960s, it left a gap. Ben and Allie Edwards are revitalizing Schoppee Farm with a new farm business cultivating hemp.

Ensuring the continuity of farming

Eighth-generation farmers Ben and Allison Edwards are bringing new life to their 200-year old family farm – and together with Maine Farmland Trust, they are taking action to keep Schoppee Farm in farming for generations to come.

Maine Farmers Need Our Support to Address PFAS Contamination

Meaningful support for farms requires swift and significant action at the state and federal levels, and we need your help to make it happen. Let’s make sure Maine farmers have the land that they need to continue to feed Maine’s economy and our communities for generations to come. Hear directly from one farm about why Maine farmers need our support to address PFAS contamination:

20th Anniversary Films

Over the course of our 20th Anniversary year, MFT released a series of films celebrating our history and work to advance farming in Maine. Films by Knack Factory.

Our Roots

Farm Viability at Ripley Farm

Farmland Protection at High View Farm

Celebrating Agriculture through Art

A Farm for the Future at Bo Lait Farm

Our Vision for the Future

A Future for Farming at Dostie Farm

Dostie Farm is a multi-generational dairy farm in Skowhegan and Fairfield, Maine. By working with Maine Farmland Trust to protect their farmland, the Dostie family is able to transition the farm from one generation to the next, and ensure that their land will be available for agriculture forever. Film by Media Loma.

Growing Local

While “buying local” is on the rise, the stories in Growing Local make clear that small farms and access to locally produced food is not a sure thing. Films by Seedlight Pictures.

Changing Hands

Pig Not Pork

Seeding A Dream

Meet Your Farmer

From the potato harvest in Aroostook County, to the innovations of a seventh-generation farmer Downeast, to the struggles of a dairy farmer in Central Maine, the short films in Meet Your Farmer (2010) remind viewers that farming is more than just a historical feature of Maine; farming in Maine is alive and well. Films by Pull-Start Pictures.

Tide Mill Farm

Reed Farm

Sandy River Farms

Horsepower Farm

Chase Farm

Ayotte Farms

Lakeside Orchards

Broadturn Farm

Listen: Podcast

Our Maine Farms podcast explores timely issues through candid conversations with Maine farmers.

Farm Succession

EPISODE #1:

For many years, Jo Barrett and her late husband operated King Hill Farm in Penobscot. When unexpected health issues made it impossible to keep farming, Jo found a younger couple willing to take on the farm, and together they puzzled out how to transfer the operation. In this episode, Jo shares the ups and downs of her journey with succession planning and why she is grateful she started thinking about it early.

EPISODE #2:

Dave and Chris Colson and their family run New Leaf Farm in Durham, an organic vegetable and hay farm in Durham. The farm provided salad greens and other vegetables to Southern Maine chefs and markets. But as the Colsons have gotten older and their children have moved away, Dave and Chris have scaled down the operation to subsistence farming. Listen in to hear how they’re thinking about the future of their farm, and why they’re not quite ready to make a big change.

EPISODE #3

Tune in to hear how the Sherburne family navigated the succession of their dairy farm business in Dexter. In this episode, Fred and Carol Sherburne discuss tough family conversations and decisions they made to ensure that their farm would continue to be a farm.

Climate Change

EPISODE #1:

Hear from Ben Whalen and Melissa Law of Bumbleroot Organic Farm, a small certified organic farm located in Windham. Together with their business partners Abby and Jeff, the couple grows a wide variety of vegetables, flowers, and herbs for Southern Maine markets. When they were ready to start their farm they relocated from Colorado to Maine for many reasons, a major one being access to water for farming. In Maine, they still employ some of the farming practices they learned out West to conserve water and extend the growing season. They are now finishing their fifth season on the farm, and have continued to learn more and more about farming in a changing climate.

EPISODE #2:

Over the past ten years, Joe and Laura Grady of Two Coves Farm have witnessed many weather changes on their saltwater farm in Harpswell. The Gradys raise pastured livestock for meat and poultry, and grow some produce on 100 acres of protected farmland. In this episode, the farmers discuss how they feel livestock operations like theirs have been less directly impacted by climate change thus far. However, they have observed related changes, like coastal erosion, and are thinking about what that might mean for the future of their farm.

EPISODE #3

Gail Van Wart is a fourth generation farmer in Dedham. The land that is now home to Peaked Mountain Farm was bought by her great grandfather in 1868. She has seen many changes in the land and the wild blueberries that grow there throughout her lifetime. More recently, the long, wet springs have impacted the blueberries, as well as the number of wildflowers and pollinating insects in the fields. Gail and her husband try to track the effects of climate change and also try to mitigate some of the impacts with methods such as beekeeping.

View: Photography

Feeding Maine: Growing Access to Good Food

Photos by Brendan Bullock, Words by Annie Aviles

Created in partnership with Good Shepherd Food Bank in 2015, Feeding Maine documents some of the many people working for food security  in our communities.

When you see the phrase “food insecurity,” you might picture scenes from distant places hit by the global food crisis: barren fields marked by drought, families fleeing wars, or people waiting in long ration lines. You might not picture Maine. Yet more than 200,000 Mainers are food insecure. The term encompasses hunger and scarcity, as well as a lack of access to food that’s fresh and healthy. Meeting this need for good food is where Maine’s farmers, workers, and volunteers come in. We are fortunate to have at hand everything required to feed our state: rich farmland, skilled farmers, and people invested in forging ties between farms and low-income Mainers. In making fresh ingredients accessible to those who need them most, the projects featured here are also forging new opportunities for Maine farms—by opening up markets, diverting waste through farm donations and gleaning, and creating new customers who seek fresh, local food. This photo series is a collaboration between Maine Farmland Trust and Good Shepherd Food Bank. It seeks to document some of the many people working for change in our communities across the state, with the hope that these efforts will continue to grow into a resilient food system that serves all Mainers.

Image 1

Stacks of old wooden apple crates wait at a property farmed by Veggies For All in Unity. Crops grown at this location go to local food pantries. Crates and tools are just a few of many items found on Maine farms that recall the state’s rich history of farming and subsistence.

Image 2

At Salty Dog Farm in Milbridge, antique tools hang on a wall. Crops grown here go to local school lunch programs. Crates and tools are just a few of many items found on Maine farms that recall the state’s rich history of farming and subsistence.

Image 3

Tim Libby separates beets from their leafy green tops and puts them in bags at a Veggies For All field in Unity. Tim, one of the founders of Veggies For All, is now the project’s farm manager. He honed his vegetable growing skills at farms in Maine and elsewhere, and uses those skills daily to help with hunger relief in the Unity area.

Image 4

Each month, Richard and Mertice “Bunny” Moore help put on a popular free community meal known as The Open Door, which they started with another couple. The project is run out of the Unity Barn Raisers’ Community Center, a multi-purpose space. The Moores also work as volunteers and board members at the Volunteer Regional Food Pantry in Unity, where they’ve launched successful gardening, cooking, and food preservation classes including a poultry raising class that provides chicks to participants.

Image 5

2015 Lewiston High School graduate Mohamed Abdullahi makes burritos as part of job training through the Youth Powered Catering program (YPC) run by St. Mary’s Nutrition Center. “Before, I didn’t really know that healthy food could also be delicious,” he says. “And learning how to cook is handy because everyone needs to eat.” Abdullahi also participates in the urban farming program, and works at the year-round farmers market in Lewiston, which St. Mary’s helped start.

Image 6

Don Morrison, operations manager at Wayside Food Programs in Portland, helps out in the warehouse. In addition to its warehouse, Wayside operates community meal sites, mobile food pantries, a kids healthy snacks program, and community gardens.

Image 7

Wayside Food Programs often receive shipments of food that could otherwise go bad or get stuck in limbo. Here, after an entire tractor trailer of ripe mangoes was dropped off unexpectedly, a volunteer makes salsa by combining chopped mangoes with tomatoes from Backyard Farms in Madison.

Image 8

During the fall root vegetable harvest, Tammy Richards operates a forklift to move crates of carrots at the Good Shepherd warehouse in Auburn. Other crops coming in include potatoes, squash, and other late season vegetables. Good Shepherd Food Bank runs the Mainers Feeding Mainers program, a collaboration with farms across the state to purchase locally grown food, which is then distributed to pantries, meal sites, and directly to families.

Image 9

“To have enough of the top quality produce, a farmer also necessarily has a surplus,” says John Tibbetts of Tibetts Family Farm in Lyman. Tibbetts grows cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, greens, sweetcorn, and other vegetables. In 2014 he sold ~$17k worth of produce to Good Shepherd Food Bank. He says the arrangement works well because they take all his good produce, not just the most perfect looking, and because he can sub other crops if a harvest pans out differently than expected.

Image 10

Cate Stoner of Turning Wheel Farm in Bowdoinham is a single mother, and a one-woman farming operation. Here, she’s pictured planting carrot seeds with her dog, Anomi. Stoner leases her fields from a local landowner; her farm is o the grid, and runs on solar power. Last year she harvested seven tons of food for the Mainers Feeding Mainers program.

Image 11

Tom Prohl washes off Rudolf radishes at Wolfe’s Neck Farm. Tom manages the teen agriculture program at the Farm; the program is in its second year, and plans to grow 2000 pounds of food for Mainers Feeding Mainers, which is rapidly expanding. Since launching in 2010, Mainers Feeding Mainers has worked with more than 30 farm partners to distribute 4 million pounds of fresh food grown in state.

Image 12

Nancy Perry looks at an almond tree during a site visit at Wolfe’s Neck Farm. Perry is the director of Good Shepherd Food Bank’s Mainers Feeding Mainers program. Perry has been a huge part of the program’s success, due to the strong relationships she’s created with farmers. The logic is simple yet high impact: instead of asking for donations, Good Shepherd Food Bank established partnerships by asking to purchase crops.

Image 13

Jay Robinson of Sweet Land Farm in Starks has sold produce to the Mainers Feeding Mainers program since it began, and says it accounts for about half his yearly sales. Jay believes that agriculture is a starting point for economic and environmental justice in general; he says that by staying in one place and forging deep ties with one’s community, there is more incentive to give back.

Image 14

Loading a full month’s worth of food at the Catholic Charities warehouse in Caribou. Front center is Fred Scheiber, the Food Bank manager; alongside him are longtime volunteers Floyd Quest (right, red hat) and Boyd Nelson (truck, blue vest); the other men are volunteers from the Fort Kent Ecumenical Food Pantry who have come to the Caribou warehouse for the pantry’s monthly allotment of food. The Caribou warehouse passes out food monthly to 24 food pantries throughout The County.

Image 15

“Aroostook County is bigger than Rhode Island and Connecticut. We might as well be our own country.” Dixie Shaw who has been Program Director at Catholic Charities for the past 27 years helps distribute USDA commodity food to seniors. Shaw is also a local radio personality and beloved community member often described as “larger than life.” Last year Catholic Charities served about 24,000 people in the area, and bought $250,000 of food from Good Shepherd Food Bank, most of which was funded by used clothing donations.

Image 16

Hannah Semler gleans spinach inside at Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm in Harborside.

Image 17

Christina Fontin, Katie Fennelly, and Hannah Semler work inside a hoop house at Four Season Farm, as part of the gleaning initiative run by Healthy Acadia. Gleaning coordinator Hannah says gleaning is empowering for people, because it allows them to be active participants in their food security. She’s working with others to develop an online platform for food surplus around the state that will ideally piggyback on existing markets, develop more teams of trained gleaners, and strengthen relationships between farmers and food pantries.

Image 18

Gerry Galuza is a skilled blacksmith and logger who earns a living by practicing his craft, and teaching at the Stone Soup Institute. He and his wife, Beverly, garden, forage, and hunt. They also pick up staples each month at Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program. “We’re raising ducks, geese, chickens. I’ve got turkeys. Used to raise cattle. We do a lot of canning, and I really like tomatoes. I do try not to eat too much bread because of my health," says Gerry. The couple also grows about 600 heads of garlic, and likes to dry apples.

Image 19

Sass Linneken started volunteering at Veggies For All in 2013 as a student at Unity College. Now graduated, they run an organization called Resources For Organizing and Social Change. Like many people across Maine, Sass was once food insecure, and relied on programs like Veggies For All to feed their family healthy food. Now that their own situation is stable, Sass gives back by volunteering, and often brings their husband and kids to help too. They also keep a vegetable garden at home.

Image 20

Crates full of freshly harvested red and golden beets sit ready to be driven to a storage facility, such as a root cellar or the Unity Food Hub. Veggies For All relies upon partnerships with other community organizations like Unity College and the Food Hub so that the program can work efficiently, and crops can be offered to food pantries at no cost.

Image 21

Veggies For All harvests their beet crop in late October at Green Earth Gardens in Unity. This group includes Veggies For All staff and their volunteers from Unity College, local food pantries, and the community. From left to right: Trevanna Grenfell, Brent Truesworthy, John Hoeltzel, Monica Spatafore, Tim Libby, Read Brugger, Anna Mason, and Sara Trunzo.

Image 22

Jay Robinson of Sweetland Farm uses his tractor to spread chicken manure fertilizer on his fields in preparation for planting. Jay grows vegetables for Good Shepherd Food Bank’s Mainers Feeding Mainers program.

Groundbreakers: Mainers Shaping Agriculture’s Future

Photos by Lily Piel

Portraits of people who have helped revive farming in Maine, and who remain committed to growing a vibrant future for farming.

Barry Higgins

Barry Higgins: Dairy farmer, beef farmer, meat processor, and ag-tourism entrepreneur, Higgins epitomizes the creative farmer, one who is always exploring new ways to keep farming.

Bob Spear

Bob Spear: Spear and his family set an example for other farmers when they transitioned their former dairy farm into a successful diversified vegetable farm, with a vibrant farm stand and sales to local stores.

Bonnie Rukin

Bonnie Rukin: A former farmer, Rukin is now helping transform Maine agriculture through her leadership of Slow Money Maine.

Bussy York

Herbert “Bussy” York (with Poppy): A farmer who is always experimenting, York now primarily raises dairy cattle and organic grain, leading the way for Maine to once again become an important grain producer.

Caitlin Hunter

Caitlin Hunter (with Tiny Turner ): Farmer and artisan cheese-maker, Hunter has been a force behind the Maine Cheese Guild and a mentor to many.

Chellie Pingree

Chellie Pingree: Pingree serves in Congress, but her heart and hands remain in farming. Over thirty years ago, she created MOFGA’s apprenticeship program. Today, when not in Washington, she guides Turner Farm on North Haven.

Don Marean

Don Marean: Horse-farmer, former legislator, and chair of the Land for Maine’s Future Board, Marean repeatedly displays his deep commitment to Maine agriculture.

Nancy And Chip Gray

Nancy and Chip Gray: Owners of the Harraseeket Inn, one of the first hotels in the nation to actively promote local organic food, the Grays have now been farm-to-table innovators for over twenty-five years.

Jim And Megan Gerritsen

Jim & Megan Gerritsen: Talented farmers who have stood up to Monsanto, the Gerritsens display in spades the elements of character found in many Maine farmers—independence, smarts, and courage.

Nancy Harmon Jenkins

Nancy Harmon Jenkins: A world-famous food writer, Jenkins is passionate about good Maine food—as well as the farmers, fishermen, chefs, artisan bakers and processors who make this food available.

Barbara Damrosch And Eliot Coleman

Eliot Coleman & Barbara Damrosch: Farmers and writers who boast an international following, Coleman and Damrosch have inspired countless people to take up farming, plant a garden, or begin to eat better.

Chris And Dave Colson

Chris & Dave Colson: Among the first farmers in the northeast to make a living by growing organic produce and selling it locally, the Colson have for over thirty years grown good food and trained young farmers.

John Bunker

John Bunker: One of America’s top authorities on heirloom apples, Bunker is always willing to share his knowledge and passion.

Rob Johnston And Janika Eckert

Rob Johnston & Janika Eckert: Johnny’s Selected Seeds—the thriving business Johnston founded, and that the couple ran together for years, before selling it to their employees—provides a critical service to farmers in Maine and beyond.

Leah And Marada Cook

Leah & Marada Cook: The Cook sisters run Crown O’Maine Organic Cooperative, demonstrating daily that out-of-the-box solutions can be delivered on a truck.

Sam Hayward

Sam Hayward: Hayward is a James Beard Award-winning chef who helped launch the farm-to-table movement in Maine and has inspired countless chefs, farmers, and eaters.

Russell Libby

Russell Libby: Libby is a homestead farmer, poet, and deep-thinker—and since 1995, the executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), a national leader in the organic foods movement. Russell Libby passed away in late 2012, a few months after this photo was taken. He was a founder of MFT, and served on our board from 1999 until last fall. He guided and supported us in so many ways. He is sorely missed.

Stew Smith

Stew Smith: As Maine’s Commissioner of Agriculture a generation ago, Smith offered a vision for Maine’s small farms. He went on to teach at U-Maine and has now, in his retirement, returned to farming.

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Get In Touch

Emily Gherman-Lad, Assistant Director of Engagement

Emily Gherman-Lad

Assistant Director of Engagement
207-338-6575
emily@mainefarmlandtrust.org

Emily Gherman-Lad

Assistant Director of Engagement
207-338-6575

Emily Gherman-Lad, Assistant Director of Engagement

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