Explore Maine Farms

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.

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.

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.

Each month, Richard and Mertice “Bunny” Moore help put on a 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. The Moores also work as volunteers and board members at the Volunteer Regional Food Pantry in Unity, where they’ve launched gardening, cooking, and food preservation classes including a poultry raising class that provides chicks to participants.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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, 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.

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 off the grid, and runs on solar power. Last year she harvested seven tons of food for the Mainers Feeding Mainers program.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Christina Fontin, Katie Fennelly, and Hannah Semler work inside a hoop house at Four Season Farm, as part of Healthy Acadia's gleaning initiative. Gleaning coordinator Hannah says gleaning is empowering, because it allows people to participate in their own food security. She’s working with others to develop an online platform for Maine's food surplus that will build on existing markets, develop teams of trained gleaners, and strengthen relationships between farmers and food pantries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.