(gentle music) - [Sandy] Healthy, sustainable farms mean strong rural communities.

And it's the philosophy of buying locally that's important, if our farms are to survive.

From co-ops to community supported agriculture, people are coming together in ways that support local agriculture all across the state.

We'll also visit Monhegan Island, where community support encourages the creative spirit to thrive.

All coming right up, on the best of RFD Maine.

Please stay with us.

- [Narrator] Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from Rural Development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(nostalgic music) - [Sandy] It had been a perfect August day on the coast of Maine, one of those few late summer days with no fog or even any haze.

The waters of Frenchman's Bay sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight, the leaves of the deciduous trees stirred ever so sensuously in the slight warm breeze.

Being home on The Point again after being away from Maine, teaching in New York was strange.

The place hadn't changed much, except for a few new houses here and there.

How well I remembered most of the old places, since I had helped open them and close them all of my growing up summers.

Hi, I'm Sandy Phippen, your host for the best of RFD Maine.

And I've been reading to you from my book, "The Police Know Everything," which has a number of stories in it concerned about growing up in small communities on the coast in Hancock County.

When I was a boy, I worked at a hotel in Winter Harbor, and every day my bosses would send me all over the place, all over Hancock County, to farms and to houses where they would prepare different foods and vegetables and so on for use at the hotel that were fresh every day.

I'd go to one place for gladiolia bulbs, another place for fancy lobster salad, several places for homemade pies and donuts.

Something like this is still going on at Jonathan's Restaurant in Blue Hill with the Hancock County Growers Association.

(upbeat music) - [Dennis] One thing I expected was that the, cooperating as farmers, we could serve the customers better.

- Castine Co-op just called, guess what's the only kind of bean they wanted?

- The ones we didn't-- - We didn't... [indistinct] - Oh, that's too bad.

- And my main motivation was so that I could be cooperating with my fellow farmers rather than competing with them, I always felt that there was, there was room for a lot more farmers around here.

And I think that this co-op is proving that to be true.

There's a big market if we combine our energies.

- We've been cooperating as growers for years, doing things like buying seeds and fertilizer together.

And so it kind of was a logical next step to work together, to sell the produce that we grow.

- [Jo] Some people are just excited about local and fresh, and some people are very excited about the organic part and they really are vocal about it at the farm stand.

- We're aware of good vegetables.

I live in a small upstate town in New York and I also work at an organic green grocer.

So we're used to a good taste.

I have four young children under the age of six and it's important to me that they're getting things without pesticides and I know how they're grown and what's going into their bodies.

- [Paul] The co-op is the marketer of the produce and the manager of the co-op coordinates orders from the different growers and sees what each grower can supply and then figures out how much he needs to put in the retail stand and what can go to the restaurants, what the restaurants want.

And it's easier for the chefs in the restaurants because they can make one call to the co-op and get everything they need rather than having to call three or four farmers to get the same quantity of produce.

- I would say that perhaps other than citrus and tropical fruits, pretty much anything that you can grow or catch or find in the woods is available here in Maine.

This is a lobster mushroom.

It's so-called because of the color.

And also because when you cook it up, it has a similar texture to lobster tail.

I'm going to use these tonight to make a sauce for a bluefin tuna, which just came in today from Maine Shellfish.

This here is also right from the Gulf of Maine.

Look at that, look at that.

It could be a beef tenderloin.

See how beautiful and fresh that is?

That's because, you know, this time of year, it's available here in the Gulf of Maine.

We have the diver scallop guys that, you know, I'll get a knock on the door and there'll be some guy with hip waders on and a bucket full of fresh shucked scallops.

You know, it's not like working with, you know, some slick salesman or something like that.

These are people that do the work themselves and know the product themselves.

- Hi Rich.

- [Rich] Hi, how are you doing?

What do you got today?

- Well, let's see.

We've got some snap peas, some chard, and green tomatoes.

- [Rich] Look at these.

You can't get these in the grocery store.

I'm using these in a, I call it a farmer's market pasta, everything you guys bring into me, I make it into a pasta sauce.

- It sounds great.

- Yeah, it's great.

It changes all the time.

- I'm a grower myself.

It's my salvation.

I get down to the garden a couple hours every day, get out of here, there's no telephone down there.

So, but the local products are really good and they're fresh and we can get them, at this time of year, pretty much on demand.

And so we can keep our things fresh.

It's a little extra work on the administrative and trying to keep up with it and ordering it, but it's certainly worth it.

And this is the flat leaf parsley that comes from the garden and it has more flavor than the traditional curly leaf.

It has really, the stalks actually, I like to, they're very sweet and crunchy, and I like those.

But we use them in stocks and to garnish the plates with, but this comes from my garden.

- Socially, it's brought the farmers closer together.

We now trade work between farms, which was one of our, our biggest ideals in the beginning, become more cooperative amongst ourselves.

And I think it's worked to a great extent.

- What I'm really looking forward to is, next year, I'm going to be able to talk to the farmers themselves and ask them to grow specific things like arugula, and fava beans and snap beans and stuff like that.

So I think that, people, not just the natives, but the tourists are gonna be amazed at the kinds of things that they can get here.

(upbeat music) - [Sandy] One of my friends from away is always amused by coming to Maine and seeing the signs in the summer that say native sweetcorn, native peas, native this or that.

She claims that it's only Maine that you have native on everything, that in other States, it's just fresh.

When I was growing up in a small town on the Maine coast, I don't think I realized we were really, you know, growing up in a community.

Of course I was, a self-contained town where we did eat local products and so on and help each other out.

But I remember all the food, while most of it was good and tasty enough, there were meals like fried tripe and stewed tomatoes that I hope never to eat again.

I think in today's world, in the back-to-the-land movement since the last 30 years or so with people coming to Maine and starting co-ops and so on, that we eat a lot better.

There's a lot more choice.

We've, like, rediscovered what it is to buy locally.

And the food does taste better.

- [John] I've always been an organic gardener.

My grandmother, who would not have even been able to pronounce organic gardener, was an organic gardener.

It would be peeling potatoes or whatever and we'd peel it into a bag, and she'd say, "Johnny, you go out in the garden, you bury the bag."

And, so I'd go out and I'd bury the bag and, you know, I buried a bag every single day in her garden.

I'd never find another bag.

The organic life, the microbial life, and the ground was so strong and virulent that it ate the bag and all.

The reason we do our farm as an organic farm is because we're ideologically organic producers.

But I think also it is a marketing advantage.

- Maine and New England are leading areas for organic farming, partly because we have smaller farms.

You know, the rest of the country moved towards a system where they have bigger farms and they specialize.

And because of our land base and the climate, we've been able to kind of build a new base of smaller organic farms, mostly doing vegetables but kind of spreading out lately into beef and a few people looking at organic dairy production.

Even some people moving into organic potato production in Aroostook County in recent years.

MOFGA's the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and we've been around for almost 25 years now.

We're going to have our birthday party next year.

Really, we're a bunch of people who care about good food.

And we're working to find ways for more Maine people to have access to good food and for more farmers to be growing it for the general public.

I think farmers all over Maine are looking at alternatives now.

Compared to 25 years ago, I think farmers in Maine are more careful in their use of pesticides.

They're better at using manure instead of treating it as a waste product that you're trying to dispose of.

Still, there's room for progress.

And we try to work with all farming groups to find ways for them to move towards an organic system.

- Crop rotation is the cornerstone of organic farming.

Really, it's the way you prevent problems from occurring.

As an organic producer, you know, you have very few things that are very effective at fixing problems.

So what you try to do is avoid getting the problems.

I tend to group plants together, which are related, like cabbage is related to broccoli and cauliflower and kale, and numerous other plants in a family called Brassica.

And so I plant all of the Brassicas in the same place, in a block, and then I move that block to another place each year, and that never gets back to...

The Brassicas never get back to the original spot for four years.

And so the things that like Brassicas have to go find my Brassicas each year.

They don't just wake up in the spring and say, "Hey, here's the salad bar."

You know, it's not a free lunch for them.

They have to go find you.

- It takes a lot of time and care to rotate the crops and see that the mix and what you have in the ground, like we use cover crops and hen manure and sheep manure and stuff like that, and compost, to get the organic matter up in the soil.

- [John] This is a field of oats, peas, and vetch.

Now you asked me earlier about harvesting it and I told you, and you were surprised to hear that I will never harvest this.

This is grown solely to allow it to rot into the ground and to replenish the soil.

Two of these crops, the peas and the vetch, are legumes.

And legumes have the ability to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere and attach it to the roots.

It works in combination with a bacteria that's existent in soil.

Anyway, so these guys are making nitrogen fertilizer for me just by extracting it from the air and fixing it onto the plant.

You might see the little sticky cards.

Here's one.

I use these for catching the pests.

It's the same color as the blossom.

You see the blossom on the watermelon is yellow.

And so they get confused and attach themselves to the cards.

- I've been doing it for a number of years.

And there are those that spray pesticides, but after a while, I think there's an equilibrium that happens in the field, and you have the beneficial insects that will eat the harmful ones and you have a balance on it.

And I don't really have a big insect problem.

We have some peppers and tomatoes, eggplant, celery, sweet corn, Swiss chard, beet greens, kale, fingerling potatoes.

And these are my all purple, blue potatoes.

- I get calls now from a lot of people who wouldn't have talked to us five or ten years ago.

It might be on one little narrow issue where we can work together, but they're at least looking at alternatives that just weren't there 15 years ago, when organic was really a bad word for a lot of conventional farmers.

In the same way, I think consumers have started to realize that how they spend their money makes a big difference in how the food system operates.

But when I'm at farmer's market and talking to people, I'm really surprised that the older folks will come up and say, you know, "This is what I remember food tasting like."

Or "I'm just looking for the food that hasn't been sprayed."

And I think that's encouraging, and what's also encouraging is that, there's this whole group of young people who are committed right from the beginning.

- This is the super sweet corn, 4427.

- That's got a very sweet taste.

- [John] The goal for us for the next bunch of years is to help people learn how to raise food organically and to talk to customers, consumers, the general public about why it's important to support your local farmer.

- [Sandy] You know, this is certainly a familiar piece of farm equipment.

When I was a kid growing up in a small Maine town, in August, I'd go hang with my grandfather, my uncles, my brother, cousins, and other local boys.

When you were small, they'd put you on top of the wagon to tramp the hay down.

And when you got to be older, you learned to pitch it in.

You know, you can support your local Maine farmer by getting involved with community supported agriculture, or CSAs, as they're called.

They make a lot of sense for everybody.

You get to get fresh products, everyday fresh food, while they get to do the farming.

- [Jill] I really would love to see more CSAs in Maine and other parts of the country.

CSAs have just really blown up.

I mean, there are just tons everywhere.

And which means the public is really responsive to a different form of agriculture.

And I would really like to see that in Maine too.

And this is a really important way to be connected to where your food comes from and to feel like it's being grown in a safe way and, you know, by people that care about it.

For us, it's been really important that the people come and experience the farm, that they learn what it takes and what everything looks like.

And when we have a wet cold year, like this year, you know what that really means.

And the only way to really feel that connection, I think, is to come to the farm.

So it's just a choice you make.

And with our CSA, the people that have bought shares have made the decision to be responsible for where their food is coming from.

They've made a kind of environmentally-conscious decision to support a local food system.

And the whole state of Maine could support a CSA and very many communities, but it takes a very persistent group of shareholders first.

And then to find a grower that, I mean, I can bet there are a lot of growers that would do it, but it's the commitment of the shareholders that really holds the whole thing together.

We retain about 75% of our shareholders every year and that just feels like a huge amount of support.

And they're the ones that keep the thing going.

I just grow the food, give it to them, but they really give the support that's needed to make the CSA successful.

Also, by supporting a local economy, you're keeping farms in business.

You know, I'm not just going to sit here and grow for nobody or, you know, to have all this land for nothing.

I can't, nobody can afford to do that.

So we're driven by economic decisions also.

Why buy a head of lettuce in the grocery store that came from Mexico when your neighbor has it?

Does that make any sense at all?

No!

It doesn't.

I mean, you have to present the reality to them.

You're going to get this bag of produce and you've paid for it.

You're gonna have to deal with it.

You're gonna have this big fronds of Chinese cabbage and beet greens and big beets and lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers, and you're going to have zucchini and you're going to have all this stuff in one bag.

So you have to cook it, you know, I mean, you have to eat it, which means you have to prepare meals and you're not, and it takes some time.

It doesn't take a whole lot of time to cook vegetables, but it takes a different thinking.

And we put recipes in every bag, help people through this big transition.

It's like, okay, this is how you make a stir-fry.

You know, it's really not that hard.

Or you can use your whole bag up in this soup or in this spaghetti sauce.

And you know, here's how you do it.

I do do that because I think a lot of people panic, getting one or two grocery bags of food where they haven't done this before.

Our society has gotten to the point where it's boxes, cans, jars, and, whew, microwave!

And so that's a whole new concept for a lot of people.

And do you want to take the time to do that?

There are a lot of people that'll say, "Hey, I work a busy week."

You know, "I got kids," I, you know, this and that.

And "I want to do something on my free time besides cook."

So are there that many people out there that really want to cook?

I don't know.

If you want to eat well and if you care about where your food comes from, and if you care about the taste of your food, do something about it, you know, go buy from a local farmer or get together with friends and ask someone to grow your produce.

I mean, it takes people being active and not lethargic about their food.

- One of the reasons I became a writer, perhaps, was my leaving Maine and going to teach in New York State for a number of years.

When I'd come home summers, it was strange how I felt about my native state and also in New York, I'd meet people whose eyes would glaze over when they found out you were from Maine, like Maine was this very special place indeed.

I wrote about it in the story of mine called, "The Returned Native."

Yes, Maine has a hold on one.

People were always introducing me as Andy from Maine, like I was inseparable from my birthplace or as if it were a special calling.

Now we're gonna meet, in this next segment, people who have found their special calling on Monhegan Island, certainly one of Maine's most special places.

They're artists.

And in a sense, when you think about it, artists in Maine are like farmers that we've been looking at here.

They've learned to cooperate too.

- [Raquel] When you get on that boat, for me, returning to the island, it's almost like getting into a meditational state.

Something just melts.

You've left behind, as a drawbridge leaves behind.

When you get here, you are an island to yourself as well.

What you've brought with you, you have, and in that respect, the ruralness here is that we can't have what everyone else has.

And many people, I think, as you've asked them, have chosen to come here for that reason.

- The very difference between rural and community, city living, of course, is a sense of community.

In a city, you only know the people in your field and that, to know just artists, whew, that can be a bore.

Here, you know all sorts of people and people who live out in a community like this, boy, they are great raconteurs.

I can sit and listen to them all day long.

Marvelous stories to tell.

- And the reason artists have come here for years is because of the character that the fishermen create on the islands, in that it's not necessarily quaint, there's a lot of rough edges to it.

Also, I think all islanders at times can be protective of their islands because really they're an ecosystem that can only hold so much traffic.

- [Sylvia] Monhegan is very inspirational to me, for my art, somewhat allows me to be who I am.

It allows me to grow as an artist.

It allows me to display my work as an artist.

The crafts and art pieces in the shop come from people who have lived here or who live here during the winter months, if not all year round.

And that's why it's called Winter Works.

- It gives us a kind of connection place with visitors.

I mean, there are very seldom times that you're in there that you aren't asked, "Do you live here all winter?"

"What is it like?"

"How much snow is there?"

"Is there a school, and how many students are there?"

"What do you do all winter?"

You know, I can stand in there and say, "Well, some of us do this."

- This island seems to be very blessed with talented people.

And you've got all this talent, you've got all this time in the winter, so it's pretty much, it makes your time filled creatively, productively.

It makes the day seem pretty important.

And we have such a great market out here in the summer that we know we can sell what we make.

It just seems to fill a big void of people who have a lot to produce and a great place to produce it and sell it in.

And it just seems to be a very comfortable mix here.

And since we have been going for so long, really, without any problems, we just, each year now, it's a really pleasant routine.

- And it seems to work, which is refreshing because usually when you're working with groups of people, you need to have a lot of things outlined and defined.

And with Winter Works, we've been able to work as a group of people, and not necessarily as an organization.

- I feel like the quality of the work is really good.

Everything's, they're very different things, but, somehow it seems to work.

We don't have any jury or anything like that.

We just, it's up to you.

It's your own standard.

The great thing about this is that, because it's a co-op, there's no commission taken out, and you just, whatever price you want to put on your item, you get.

- This summer has been very good for me and judging from the looks of this place, I think for everyone else.

- We hope you enjoyed visiting with those creative people on Monhegan Island.

I'm Sandy Phippen and I hope you will join us for the next edition of the best of RFD Maine.

Be sure to visit the best of RFD Maine on Maine Public Television's homepage on the World Wide Web.

The Best of RFD Maine was taped on location at the Page Farm and Home Museum at the University of Maine.

- [Narrator] Production of RFD Maine is made possible through a television demonstration grant from Rural Development, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(soothing music) - Right, what she would have me do, it would be peeling potatoes or whatever and we'd peel it into a bag and she'd say, "Johnny, you go out in the garden and you bury the bag."

And so I'd go out and I'd bury the bag.

And you know, I buried the bag every single day in her garden, I'd never find another bag.