December 4, 2024
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Kristina Buckley
(Photo credit: above captured by Elle Darcy Photography)
Catherine Caswell returned to her family’s farm in Gray in 1996 to begin farming the land that had long been out of production. Her grandfather bought the former Whitney Farm, a locally-known farming landmark, back in 1936, but her parents decided not to follow in his farming footsteps. Many years later when her family made the decision to sell, she returned home, armed with a degree in environmental science and a strong determination to get her hands in the dirt. Caswell Farm first required a lot of infrastructural work to get back up and running as a working farm, and with her woodworking skills and hunger to keep learning, she got to work. Over the past 3 decades, Catherine has made community central to the farm’s mission, from the early days of selling specialty crops to restaurants and diversifying the farm’s income with a wedding business, to adding a roadside farm stand and hosting food pop-ups and community workshops. As the vision for Caswell Farm has continued to grow, so have their offerings.
In early 2024 Catherine joined our Business of Farming cohort alongside her Farm Manager Mallory Ross. With the initial seed grant and technical assistance offered through the program, Catherine and Mallory have worked with designers at Rugged Coastal to revamp their farm website to better reflect their evolving brand, A Little Something at Caswell Farm. Recently we had a chance to catch up with her to hear more about how her experience with the program has shaped her approach and what’s happening on the farm these days. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
You don’t know what you don’t know. For us, that was seeing, understanding, and interpreting the profit and loss financial pieces effectively to know what was truly working and what wasn’t. Having that concrete information is a powerful tool to make informed decisions that work best for your specific circumstances. This year it’s remarkable how steady, consistent and precise the bookkeeping has been, in a way that it’s never been before. I hadn't been keeping up with all the data that I needed in order to be able to understand the profits and losses and the cash flow, the full picture of what was going on. So, it's been amazing, it's just changed everything.
And this class also really put my eyes and ears together with other people that are just like myself. Social media definitely promotes this farm and that farm, but at the time I didn’t necessarily know who they are, or what they feel their struggles were. At the Business of Farming workshops, I was like, I'm dying for all these conversations! I didn't know it, but I was dying for every conversation I had in that room. And now, there’s just a number of different places where I can say, hey, I’ve got this new thing going on, call me if you’re interested and we can talk more. And I’m getting responses. I just never thought to ask that way before. I don’t think a lot of small farmers think that way. Just ask!
Because I had the experience of working at Fore Street and Street & Co. restaurants when I first moved back to Maine, I realized that growing greens and selling specialty crops directly to restaurants was a growing market, and they were really supportive. But it was a small operation and I realized that I need to bring in other people that complement me in what I was not proficient at yet. Around the time I had my son, I started to host weddings at the farm as a way to grow income for the farm business, which felt so natural because I love hosting celebrations and gatherings, and it gave me an opportunity to bring on help.
During the early pandemic, things became even clearer about how important places like farms are in rural Maine to not only a thriving food system, but also to a sense of community, and as gathering places. I thought, well, let's start making pizza for the neighbors. We have our pizza oven which we previously were using for catering. I put a sign out on the road for Friday night pizzas, and the neighbors started calling in to order it. They'd meet us at the end of the driveway and that was how I started to interact with my immediate community, which was something that just was overwhelmingly joyful for me. I started to get all these messages, like “I've wondered about this farm, I used to play basketball in that barn with your uncle, your grandmother was my teacher in elementary school, I worked on the town council with your grandfather.” All these people that have been driving by every day for the last 25 years, they have history with this place and I want to hear about it and make more history. So let's keep this going!
With our new commercial kitchen on-site, we’re launching A Little Something at Caswell Farm, hosting a diverse range of activities, workshops, and culinary experiences centered around living locally. We wanted to differentiate from the wedding venue side of our business, and are calling our new venture A Little Something because I want it to be open and evolve - like maybe we’ll have a class on small engine work, or more permaculture related workshops.
I'd been wanting to do this for years, but needed the time and finances to do it. Now I have the ability to project the finances of new and existing ventures as well so much more because of Business of Farming, and through that program we also had the help of Rugged Coastal to help us rebrand. Our old website was stagnant, it was just set up to purchase vegetables, and we really hadn’t put the community element into it. Now, you can really see how we’re trying to bring people together. I think Maine has a unique ability to keep the small farm going, and help keep them from disappearing. I want to contribute to that, and to me that means exposure, and having people coming here on the property. We hope to invite local school classrooms in the spring and really feel the dirt and plant a seed and all these things that keep people connected to their food and the earth.
My thinking now is, I just need to be able to break even to start and see where things go, because this is the love part. I wanted to do this because I want to connect to my community. The things that end up being the most successful and impactful are seeing a need within your own community and realizing the ways that you have the tools to address it. I think it's so amazing that people are seeking these connections, and these are the ways I think that we can do that here at Caswell Farm.
Throughout November and December, you can join us for classes and workshops, from charcuterie class, gingerbread house making, to wreath-making and everything in between. Our events calendar is always changing to reflect what folks in the community are wanting to see. You can find a list of upcoming events here. We will be releasing our Winter classes schedule around Christmas.
We also recently had a farm-to-table Thanksgiving menu available through Barn & Table catering company, who share our space (also another business of mine) and partner with us when we host weddings and events. We plan to do many more seasonal menus such as Holiday Cookies that are running now. Our head chef Brian works closely with our farm team to collaborate and plan for planting what they want to see on the plate next season. And it’s win-win for all of us – it’s a platform for everyone to showcase what they bring to the table, and we’re all invested and benefit from what we do together. I'm fortunate for all the people I have around me. You can't do it alone!
During the warmer months, you can visit the farm through our classes and our honor system farmstand for fresh produce. (With our new commercial kitchen, we also hope to have pickled vegetables, jams, and chutneys available next year.) There's plenty of parking and signage. It's pretty much an open campus, we love it when people walk around and kids explore the gardens.
Click here to see all that A Little Something at Caswell Farm has to offer. To learn more about Maine Farmland Trust's Business of Farming program, click here.
